With detachable sections ready for launch, this, I believe, is the craft of the hour.

The pattern is priced at a well-deserved $5.

And it looks like the lawyers won.

The class-action lawsuit by 59 plaintiffs was launched to confront Procter & Gamble with evidence that the company's Dry Max diapers were causing unusually severe rashes. The new formulation, which reduced absorbent paper and redistributed the liquid-absorbing plastic in a design the company touted as better for the environment and less bulky, led to a Facebook group with thousands of members sharing photographs of severe rashes and blistering and led to an extensive ZRecs investigation, wall-to-wall mainstream media coverage, an inquiry by the Consumer Products Safety Commission, and a major change of course in marketing by Procter & Gamble.

Pampers will pay $2.7 million in lawyers' fees, and has committed to spending $400,000 on "training programs in pediatric skin health" while admitting no wrongdoing. They are also paying plaintiffs $1,000 each to cover their expenses.

Marketing under the cover of science is nothing new in the baby products industry. It's how Nestle and other infant formula companies market formula under questionable claims around the world, and it's how P&G is frightening parents in China to begin favoring diapers over their cultures' time-tested methods of potty training, and encouraging parents in India to switch from cloth to disposables:

There’s even bigger potential in India, where the birth rate is almost double that of China but the diaper market remains tiny at about $43.4 million. (Pampers is the top-selling brand there, too.) So now, P&G plans to take the sleep argument throughout rural and poor areas in India and elsewhere. The company also makes its case by positioning itself as a baby-care educator. Pampers sponsors healthcare-outreach programs such as a rural immunization program in China and mobile medical-care vans in Pakistan and Morocco. In India, there’s a door-to-door program that offers baby-care tips and diaper samples for moms. [Source]

This is an unfortunate outcome. P&G's educational programs have been and will remain committed to the idea that diaper rash is naturally occurring and has no relationship to the practices or materials used in modern diapering. In other words, they've committed to earmarking $400,000 of their marketing budget to sponsored programs that promote their financial interests under the cover of scientific objectivity.

If you declared yourself as a class member in this lawsuit, you actually have two options if you do not like this arrangement. You can object to the settlement in writing, and have the court "consider your views." If you live in the Cincinnati area, or are willing to travel to make your voice heard, you can ask the Court to let you speak at the approval hearing. Here are the details from the settlement notice [PDF], including deadlines for each option.

If you are a Class Member, you can object to the settlement and give reasons why you think the Court should not approve it. The Court will consider your views. To object, you must send a letter saying that you object to the settlement in In Re Dry Max Pampers Litigation, Case No. 1:10-cv-00301. Be sure to include your name, address, telephone number, signature and the reasons why you object to the settlement. You must send your objection by first class mail to the Dry Max Pampers Notice Administrator, the Court, and to one of the attorneys for the Settlement Class ("Class Counsel") and one of the attorneys for Procter & Gamble. A list of the attorneys is provided on the Full Notice, available at www.diaperclassactionsettlement.com. Your objection must be postmarked no later than August 29, 2011, or your objection will not be valid and will not be considered by the Court.

You may ask the Court to speak at the hearing on the approval of the settlement. To do so, you must send a letter saying that it is your "Notice of Intention to Appear" in In Re Dry Max Pampers Litigation, Case No. 1:10-cv-00301. Include your name, address, telephone number and signature. Your Notice of Intention to Appear must be postmarked no later than September 21, 2011, and also must be sent to the Clerk of Court, Class Counsel and Procter & Gamble's Counsel at their addresses in the Full Notice. You cannot speak at the hearing if your Notice of Intention to Appear is late.

Now nearly seven, we've been allowing Z to stay up and play quietly in her room after her bedtime routine. To our surprise, after some typical toy play sessions she has turned this evening hour or so (she typically declares herself tired enough to go to sleep by around 9:30) into one of the most productive periods of her day. Some evenings she rounds up scissors and tape, paper and string, raids our recycling bins, and emerges with an invention or doll outfit. Other nights she develops songs to sing to us or dance routines.

"Superbaby" (our name, not hers) is what she made a few nights ago, out of some deflated balloons.











We'll write something up about Z's "free-range" bedtime for anyone who's interested!

Well-played, Greenpeace. Well-played.



(Seriously. Everybody should be taking notes on this.)

I was interviewed by the fine gentlemen at DadLabs a few weeks ago on the current state of regulation and ongoing exposure to BPA. (Don't follow these guys yet? Follow them.) They posted the interview segment last week, and did a great job of trimming my thirty minutes of commentary into a succinct web interview. I wanted to share the interview, and then offer you notes I used to prepare for it, which has quite a bit more detail.



I'm going to post a couple of tip lists as separate posts, because they're pretty utilitarian and I want them to be easily referenced and shared. But here's the meat of our understanding of the issue of BPA regulation as it currently stands. These are raw notes, as I prepared them to consult during the interview.

The state of BPA regulation and prospects for chemical reform

The risk
Endocrine disruptor, mimics body’s own hormones. Greatest effects in early childhood development and in utero. NIH, FDA, and many many studies have all expressed concern over risks. Longitudinal studies of behavior are needed (and under way). Replicability of results is key. Known hazards add up.

BPA reform: There are reasons for optimism.
Eight states now have BPA bans (mostly on bottles and sippy cups): Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Additionally, 17 states are considering new bans this year on a variety of items.

These bans have nationwide impact because distribution channels are national, not state-based.

One common argument against banning BPA in the U.S. used to be that BPA was OK with the European Union, which typically has stricter chemical regulations. As of this month, BPA is now banned in baby bottles in the EU -- the ban just went into effect (manufacturing ban).

At the societal level, most companies have switched to polypropylene or a new material, Tritan copolyester, for bottles. There never were many polycarbonate sippy cups. But manufacturers have made changes only in those product areas that have become regulated -- there is no generalized movement occuring in bath toys, pacifiers, or teething toys. Which brings us to...

Broader chemical reform: It's hard to be optimistic.
The Toxic Substances Control Act dates to 1976. Mindset was that chemicals should be treated as "innocent until proven guilty." It needs reform. Reform means meeting a standard of safety prior to use. Under the TSCA, the EPA’s hands are tied. The 62,000 chemicals on the market when it was signed into law were more or less grandfathered in, and only 2,000 have undergone any required testing. EPA must prove that chemical poses "unreasonable risk" to require testing at all.

There is a reform bill now in the Senate, the Safe Chemicals Act, but the chemical lobby is very, very strong. The same basic bill failed to pass in 2010, 2009, and 2008, the year the chances probably seemed strongest. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey has been behind every one of the bills.

Coke shareholders just [April] rejected a shareholder proposal asking the company to disclose its plans for removing BPA from its cans. It was defeated roughly 3:1, just as a similar proposal was a year ago. Since their own totally non-commital commitment to thinking about looking at alternatives to BPA-lined cans is getting pretty long in the tooth, the secrecy looks worse with each passing year.

One bright spot is that the American Academy of Pediatrics is now calling for reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

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Stay tuned for two lists of tips (titles will get better):

• What you should do, beyond buying "BPA-free" labeled products, to limit your family's BPA consumption


• Seven things you should care about avoiding if you care about avoiding BPA

The Doodle Roll is a simple concept: A "self-serve" roll of paper in a case, with a place to store crayons, for drawing on the go. It's a significant improvement on a core idea we've seen before -- Klutz's Doodle Dogs/Cats/etc. from several years ago, still on the market -- because it takes advantage of the two big benefits of roll paper drawing: long-form drawing (murals or narratives) and collaboration (providing a strip long enough for multiple artists to draw together). Z has enjoyed drawing tiny murals on adding machine paper before, so this sounded like a good idea to us. As it turns out, Doodle Roll offers a welcome twist on the hurry-up-and-wait activity in any setting where parents (a) pull out scraps of paper and a crayon or pen, (b) carry around a full drawing kit with paper and a pencil pouch, or (c) curse themselves for forgetting the drawing stuff again.

Our six-year-old had no trouble unrolling more paper from the roll, which is pretty much the most important criteria this device needs to meet. She couldn't get the crayon compartment open, but if you're carrying a Doodle Roll around in your purse or car, you'll be glad for the tight fit.



There are no snaps or clasps to impede even younger users from similar success -- it's a simple molded plastic inset lip made of forgiving PET plastic. But even if you're the official assistant to the artist, it's easy to unspool enough paper to keep them going for a while.

The plastic used sort of screams "disposable," but we're glad they chose it. PET is as pervasive and as easily recyclable as a soft drink bottle, whereas a firmer plastic like polypropylene, although it might get a bit more use, would use up significantly more resources to manufacture and recycle.

Z's one note of dissatisfaction was with crayon quality. She is a connoisseur of crayons and found the set provided by Doodle Roll to be too soft and easily broken. Personally, I was pleased that they weren't waxy, poor colorers like the kind you get at restaurants. They actually color well. That said, it's four crayons. They're easy to replace with your own if and when they get broken.

The cheapskates in us saw this product and said, "Hey, maybe I should bring a roll of adding machine tape to our next meal out instead of pieces of paper." That plus Z's ever-ready pouch full of crayons would do the trick. But there are two advantages -- okay, three if you count the sheer convenience -- to the Doodle Roll. One is that the plastic case grips the roll end of the paper and holds it flat, so the paper doesn't further unspool while your child is drawing. (I know, cheapskates -- a pencil pouch on one side of the roll and a set of keys on the other would do the same.) The other is that this paper is wider than adding machine tape, and gives kids a lot more room to work with vertically. The Doodle Roll comes in 4" and 6" wide strips, which, incidentally, we cannot find anywhere on the Internet for purchase on their own. (It figures: Doodle Roll maker Imagination Brands' founder, Marc Cooper, works in the paper industry.) If you could track these things down, and stashed a rubber-banded one in a drawing kit with a set of four or more crayons, and planned to improvise a method for holding the roll in place everywhere you went, you would essentially be duplicating the features of the Doodle Roll. But you would be doing so in order to save $4 minus whatever the paper cost you. Even cheapskates have a breaking point, right?

The Doodle Roll is sold in 4" and 6" widths (with 15' and 30' lengths of paper, respectively) for $3.99 and $4.99 at children's stores nationwide, thanks to a distribution deal with Schylling. The 4"x15' roll is suitable for a large purse, if you don't mind the weight, but either size travels well as standalone items or in your child's own bag, as everything is self-contained in the plastic carrier.

Side note: Z's drawing, shown above, is a scene from Jasper Tompkins' exceptional, out-of-print children's book The Catalog.

This item, received from the company for review, is a consumable and is not affected by our Keep No Stuff policy.