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Chemical Concerns and Car Seats
Should Parents Worry About Their Child's Car Seats?
By Teri Brown
Michael Shaw, a biochemist and the executive vice president/director of marketing for Interscan Corporation, a manufacturer of specialized electronic gas detection instrumentation and software for safety, process and health care applications, says the testing methodology in the Healthy Car report is quite flawed, and it is important to note that Ecology Center did not test for any of the compounds mentioned. Instead, they used X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) to simply discern the elements present.
According to Shaw, they then extrapolated what compounds might be present that consist of these elements and added all the horrible effects that can be attributed to high concentrations of these compounds.
Shaw lists what should have been done:
- Start off with a list of suspect compounds to test for.
- Place car seats (one at a time) into a known environment, with no air changes, and at fixed temperature and pressure. Test air of this environment after a selected period of time for target compound using appropriate instrument – probably gas chromatograph.
- Second set of tests would involve swabbing the surfaces of car seats using cotton swabs dipped in a buffer solution matching infant saliva.
- Analyze swabs for possible transfer of selected toxic compounds, probably using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
Jeanna Rimmer, the director of marketing of Britax, a children's car seats manufacturer, is disturbed by the way the story has been reported. Britax has car seats listed in both the best and the worst categories for chemical composition.
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