NEW YORK—Mattel Inc.'s Fisher-Price unit is recalling about 1.5 million Chinese-made toys around the world, nearly a million of them in the United States, because their paint may contain too much lead.
The recall is the latest in a string of incidents that have fueled U.S.-China tensions over the safety of Chinese products.
The recalled toys, which include popular preschool characters like Elmo, Big Bird, and Dora, were made by a contract manufacturer in China using a non-approved paint pigment containing lead, Mattel said on Wednesday.
The company said it is recalling roughly 967,000 plastic toys from the U.S. market and about 533,000 from international markets, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Mexico.
"We operate on a global basis," said Jim Walter, senior vice president of worldwide quality assurance at Mattel, adding that the recall could affect all its markets around the world.
In the United States, the products were sold nationwide at retail stores between May and August, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. They sold for $5 to $40.
Mattel said U.S. consumers should contact Fisher-Price to arrange a product return and to receive a voucher for a replacement toy.
Mattel, which said it was made aware of the problem in early July, said it is working with retailers to identify the affected products and have them removed from shelves. It also said it is intercepting incoming shipments to stop them from being sold.
Of the nearly one million products recalled from the U.S. market, Mattel said about 30 percent had reached retail shelves.
The toy company declined to identify the manufacturer, but Walter said Mattel had worked with the contract manufacturer in China for roughly 15 years.
In China, Mattel offices referred inquiries back to headquarters and declined to answer any questions or even confirm if the toys were produced by their particular plants.
Walter said the toy maker has launched an investigation to find out how the paint made its way onto the toys.
"The disappointment here was we had a single contract manufacturer that we had a long-standing relationship with who did not do what is required by Mattel," Walter said.
While Mattel has stopped producing and shipping toys from that manufacturer, Mattel said it is waiting for the outcome of its investigation to decide whether it will continue to do business with the contractor.
Lead paint has been linked to health problems in children, including learning disabilities and permanent brain damage, so the recall is likely to increase worries over the safety of Chinese products.
President George W. Bush has ordered a high-level review of U.S. rules intended to keep out harmful imports following a series of scares involving imported Chinese seafood, wheat gluten, toothpaste and pet food.
The incidents have drawn attention to the low rate of inspections of food and other goods and prompted calls in Congress for more aggressive surveillance of Chinese goods.
In recent years, about 66 percent of all U.S. product recalls have been of imported goods, with a majority of those products made in China, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
In late June, concern about the safety of farm-raised catfish, shrimp and other seafood from China prompted the FDA to put a hold on those imports until suppliers prove they are free of harmful residues.
That followed a recall of more than 1 million Chinese-manufactured toy trains on June 13 because some may have contained lead paint.
Earlier this year, melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizers, surfaced in pet food from China, killing animals and prompting wide recalls.
A poisonous chemical often found in solvents and antifreeze was recently detected in some Chinese-made toothpaste.
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