Bounce Houses: The Newest Lead Threat

Next time you rent a Bounce House for your child’s birthday party you will now be asked the following question by the sales clerk:

“Leaded or unleaded?”

The bounce houses are made primarily of vinyl, a type of plastic that is often associated with lead. Recent tests performed by the Center for Environmental Health on the popular party attraction showed that most of these structures have an unhealthy level of lead. And by unhealthy, I mean 70 times the allowable limit for children’s’ toys. And by 70 times the allowable limit, I mean that prolonged exposure to this much lead will turn your child into a vegetable.

The outrageous concentration of lead contained in these structures has prompted Attorney General Jerry Brown of California to file lawsuits against several bounce house manufacturers, most notably:

• Bay Area Jump
• Cutting Edge Creations
• Funtastic Factory, known as einflatables.com
• Magic Jump
• Leisure Activities Co.
• Thrillworks
• The Inflatable Store
• Jump for Fun, Inc.
• Jump for Fun National, Inc.

The scariest part of this story isn’t that these inflatable palaces contain a high concentration of lead. It’s that they are used in party settings, where children are spending the majority of their time eating snacks and playing. Unless they wash their hands after each snack, there’s a good chance they are ingesting the lead from the bounce houses—making it all the more likely that they will become sick or poisoned from the lead-exposure.

Looking back on it, I spent an inordinate amount of time jumping around bounce houses as a child. They were—and probably still are—very popular attractions at birthday parties and carnivals. Maybe now I can blame my complete lack of an attention span on something other than genetics. Suddenly my 1^st grade aspirations to grow up and become the 5^th Ninja Turtle make a little more sense.