Decades after America’s slums were sanitised, aired out and given plumbing and running water, many apartments remained covered with lead paint – which flakes easily and can poison children if they eat it. Lead paint was the last reminder of the disease-ridden tenements of turn-of-the-century industrial cities and it lingered for a very long time – right into the suburbanised, glamorous America of the 1960s. It was eradicated only after a long national campaign of legislation, propaganda, inspection and shaming of landlords. Lead paint remains, for Americans middle-aged and older, a symbol of poverty, backwardness, social indifference and early death.

This helps explain the intensity with which Americans are reacting to the news that several popular toys made in China, including Mattel’s “Sarge” truck and RC2’s Thomas the Tank Engine, contained lead paint. Mattel’s recall of 18.2m toys on Tuesday, its second such action in two weeks, was aimed mostly at ingestible magnets that are not China’s fault. Still, it has been an embarrassing year for Chinese exports. Dogs keeled over from melamine-laced pet food. A hundred people died in Panama from drinking cough-syrup containing DEG (diethylene glycol, which is used in antifreeze). DEG-laced toothpaste was found in Spain. Puffer fish (common) were sold as monkfish (fancy).