Starting your holiday shopping this week? The LAST thing you want to be giving the children and babies on your list is dangerous chemicals like lead and arsenic. Yet, when the Ecology Center, a Michigan-based nonprofit, tested over 1,500 popular children's toys for lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals, they found that one in three toys tested were found to contain "medium" or "high" levels of chemicals of concern.

Scary, right? But knowledge truly is power in this case. Before you give a child a toy this holiday season, search the HealthyToys database for its chemical test results:

http://www.momsrising.org/healthytoys

When you're at the store, you can search the HealthyToys database from your cell phone. Simply text "healthytoys [name of toy]" -- for example "healthytoys Elmo" or "healthytoys Wii" -- to 41411.

Then help other parents protect their kids. Print this flyer - which includes info on how to search for toys using your cell phone while you're shopping - and post them up at work, school, the grocery, wherever you go.

Please help spread the word that toxic toys are still on store shelves by posting this flyer in public places, and passing along this information to friends and family. (And if you're not already a member of MomsRising, please sign on now to stay informed: www.momsrising.org.)

Thanks for your help making this a more family-friendly country!

-- Donna, Kristin, Katie, Joan, Mary, Anita, and the whole MomsRising.org team

P.S. According to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, toys containing toxic phthalates are supposed to be banned starting on February 10, 2009. But the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is saying that stores can continue to sell down their inventories as long as they were manufactured before the February deadline. If you haven't already, please sign our letter to the CPSC to tell them to stop monkeying around with our kids' health! (Already 6,443 people have signed.) Go to www.momsrising.org/really_ban_phthalates to add your name.