Here's a problem that faces everyone who spends any time on the Web -- and if you're reading this blog, it applies to you. How do you keep track of all of your Web passwords, while at the same time keeping them secure?

Chicago Tribune Internet critic Steve Johnson writes about the problem on his Web log.

If you’re even a little bit digitally inclined, you’ve got password-protected accounts for at least some of the following: Amazon, eBay, your bank’s Web site, Best Buy.com, BestBuy.com. the Bloglines RSS reader.

You’ve got passwords for accessing your office e-mail from home and your home e-mail from the office, your credit card companies, mortgage company, and home equity company. And I could name a dozen more.

Security is a big issue. As he points out, if you keep a list of passwords in a Microsoft Word file labeled “passwords,” you might as well just email them to hackers to save them the trouble. I guess the same applies to using passwords like your dog's name, or your school's mascot.

The column is worth a read because it gives some good tips for picking more secure passwords, and for keeping track as you travel and use different PCs.

Computer maker Apple Inc. tried to quiet critics of the company's environmental record today with long open letter posted on Apple's Web site.

The letter from CEO Steve Jobs, titled "A Greener Apple," goes into detail about Apple's efforts to remove various toxic chemicals from its products, and to recycle old Macs and iPods. The letter makes some plastics-related promises, specifically related to PVC and brominated flame retardants: "Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008."

Here are some details:

Some companies have made promises to phase out other toxic chemicals like polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a type of plastic primarily used in the construction industry but also found in computer parts and cables, and brominated flame retardants, or BFRs, which reduce the risk of fire. Apple began phasing out PVC twelve years ago and began restricting BFRs in 2001. For the past several years, we have been developing alternative materials that can replace these chemicals without compromising the safety or quality of our products. Today, we’ve successfully eliminated the largest applications of PVC and BFRs in our products, and we’re close to eliminating these chemicals altogether. For example, more than three million iPods have already shipped with a BFR-free laminate on their logic boards.

Dell and Lenovo have publicly stated that they plan to eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in their products in 2009. Hewlett Packard has not yet publicly stated when they will eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in their products, but has said that they will publish a plan by the end of 2007 which will state when in the future they will eliminate the use of these toxic chemicals in their products.

Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008.

A note of comparison — In 2007 HP stated that they will remove PVC from all their packaging. Apple did this 12 years ago. Last year, Dell began the process of phasing out large quantities of brominated flame retardants in large plastic enclosure parts. Apple’s plastic enclosure parts have been bromine-free since 2002.

In one environmental group’s recent scorecard, Dell, HP and Lenovo all scored higher than Apple because of their plans (or “plans for releasing plans” in the case of HP). In reality, Apple is ahead of all of these companies in eliminating toxic chemicals from its products.

Apple has been under pressure from Greenpeace to, among other things, phase out PVC. Today, Greenpeace is ethusiastically applauding Apple's new stance:

We are cheering! Steve Jobs has decided to bring us closer to the greener apple that Mac users all over the world have been asking for.

Today we saw something we've all been waiting for: the words "A Greener Apple" on the front page of Apple's site, with a message from Steve Jobs saying "Today we're changing our policy."

It's not everything we asked for. Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures' pledge to phase them out by 2009. Way to go Steve!

Greenpeace can take credit for forcing this change. But it will be up to Apple and its suppliers to find materials that perform as well.

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein wrote an interesting piece last week that makes you think about U.S. trade with China, and whether free trade always makes sense.

The focus is on Intel Corp.'s plans to build a $2.5 billion chip fabrication plant in Dalian, China. Nothing surprising about that, right? After all, a lot of manufacturing is moving to China, the result of cheaper labor costs and the opportunity to serve a growing market in Asia. But it's not that simple.

It would be one thing if the Chinese had developed the capacity to make advanced microchips on the basis of their own investment and ingenuity. But it is quite another when the technology for the chips and chip production has been created by American researchers and American companies, and transferred wholesale to a developing country that makes no secret of its intention to use that knowledge and experience to improve its own industry.

By what reasoning is this a net plus for an American economy that is supposed to prosper in this globalized world on the basis of its high-tech know-how? Can you really say that, in such a high-value-added industry, the lower cost of imported computer chips will offset the foregone economic output -- jobs and profits -- that Intel's move entails?

As it turns out, the reason it will be cheaper for Intel to make those chips in China has little to do with lower-cost labor. That's because chip factories aren't particularly labor intensive. In fact, a study by the Semiconductor Industry Association found that 90 percent of Asia's cost advantage over U.S. production is attributable to government subsidies and tax breaks. In the case of Intel's new plant, I'm reliably told that those subsidies amount to about $500 million. That's a sum well beyond anything available to Intel in the United States. And it hardly fits into any common-sense notion of free trade or fair and open competition.

Pearlstein chalks it up to strategic trade, a move by one country to subsidize a portion of its economy because the short-term cost will be worthwhile over the long term. Other examples of strategic trade include keeping the value of currency artificially low in order to stimulate exports.

The U.S. uses strategic trade too -- we've got agricultural subsidies, for example, and large chunks of our economy are reserved for U.S.-based defense contractors. But Pearlstein argues that U.S. citizens are catching on to the fact that what passes for free trade these days isn't necessarily free, and some sectors of the U.S. economy are suffering.

Contrary to what you hear from editorial writers and other free-trade ideologues, it is not "protectionist" for the United States to impose countervailing duties on imports from a country that subsidizes exports and keeps its currency pegged to the dollar.

It's not "anti-business" to toss out a tax code that encourages multinational corporations to invest overseas and replace it with one that gives tax preferences to companies that create high-value-added jobs in the United States.

And it is not "class warfare" to raise taxes on those who have benefited from globalization to pay for health care, wage insurance and retraining of workers who have lost their jobs as a result of globalization.

There is a reason that, when it comes to trade and globalization, more Americans believe Lou Dobbs than Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke -- and it's not because they've been bamboozled. The reason is that Americans perceive, correctly, that in recent years liberalized trade has not delivered as promised, that education alone is not the answer, and that neither party has come up with economic policies as tough and effective as China's.

Trade issues are being debated in Washington right now. This column covers an interesting slice of the debate. I'm curious about how plastics industry readers see the debate, and whether their point of view differs depending on whether they view their company as a U.S. or a global firm.

Bill Bregar, one of our senior reporters, has joked that whenever a newspaper or radio station has a slow news day, they do a feature on plastic pink flamingos (complete with an interview with colorful designer Don Featherstone).

Well, now we can add a new alternative topic to the mix: plastic kazoos.

The Sarasota, Fla., Herald-Tribune's Web site has this feature today about Kazoobie Inc., a small but growing manufacturer in Port Richey that specializes in plastic kazoos. According to the story, the company shipped 600,000 kazoos last year, and expects to hit 1 million in annual sales soon.

"It's not rocket science," said Stephen Murray, the company's vice president of operations.

They've piped the musical mouth-pipes to entertainers such as talk-show host Conan O'Brien and rock bands Weezer and Jethro Tull and to entities like McDonald's and the Pentagon and Red Hat Society -- they even have a standing order for the United States Embassy in the United Arab Emirates.

"Every year, they order 50 kazoos for the Marines there," Murray says. "They have a Marine kazoo band.

"I don't know what they play."

Fun stuff. The plastics details: Kazoobie assembles and ships the product, but doesn't mold the parts. This story doesn't say, but this earlier feature from the St. Petersburg, Fla. Times, identifies the molder as Ven-Tel Plastics Corp. in Pinellas Park, Fla.

Also, the Sarasota story mentions that Kazoobie owns the domain name www.kazoos.com, which was probably a good idea for such a specialized company.

Is Chinaplas growing too fast to go back to Beijing? That's what Stanley Chu, chairman of show organizer Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd. of Hong Kong suggested in a news conference this afternoon.

Traditionally, Chinaplas is held in Shanghai in even-numbered years, and it alternates between Guangzhou and Beijing in odd-numbered years. But Chu said Chinaplas has grown too big for Beijing's exhibition hall. This year's show is 102,000 square meters (up from 77,000 square meters in 2005).

"Chinaplas is growing too fast, and Beijing's exhibition hall is growing too slowly," Chu said. "We can't ask our exhibitors to cut their space in half" in order to go back to Beijing.

Officially, Adsale has not decided where to book the 2009 show. It's a little hard to believe that Beijing can quickly gear up for the summer Olympic games, but won't be able to accommodate Chinaplas.

Also, keep in mind that Adsale doesn't have a monopoly on the Shanghai location. Applas will be held from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 this year in Shanghai, just a few months before the next Chinaplas. It's a much smaller show... but can this market sustain two big shows in the same city so close together?

I suppose if any market can, it would be Shanghai.

Here are a few more tidbits from Chu's news conference:

The Chinese [processing] companies are thirsting for overseas technology. They know that they can no longer rely on low-cost products.

And he spoke about his goal for the trade show:

The first step is to become the No. 2 [show] in the world. Now we are No. 3. So we are going after NPE.

I'm in Guangzhou this week for Asia's largest plastics trade show, Chinaplas. This is my first trip to China, and several people have asked for my impressions.

Here's a rough lis, without any regard for importance:

The show is huge, and very international. There are 1,578 exhibitors, and about 1,000 are from outside China. Adsale, the organizer, did not announce attendance figures yet today, but should have some numbers ready in a few hours. The show seemed pretty busy.

Exhibiting companies seemed to have a lot of news, as many are growing here to serve the expanding market.

Traffic is unbelievable. I've been teaching my youngest daughter to drive the past few months, and I never get to the point with her where I cover my eyes and hope for the best. That happened twice today. I don't know how we missed that pedestrian...

I've heard a variety of strategies for serving the Chinese market, and right now it seems like everything is working OK. It will be interesting to see, if there's a downturn, which strategies really work the best.

I'm looking forward to the second day of the show. All day today, people were interested in whether the GE Plastics sale to Sabic had been finalized. But it wasn't announced until after the show closed. Tomorrow, I think there will be plenty of buzz about the news. Interestingly, Sabic is exhibiting at Chinaplas, but GE Plastics -- which my colleague tells me usually has a huge presence at the show -- isn't here.

What do 2 million plastic bottles look like? Or 426,000 cell phones? How about 60,000 plastic bags? You can check them out here, with some amazing photos by Chris Jordan.

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

Jordan says the 2 million bottles, for example, represents the number used in the United States every five minutes. The cell phones? The number retired in the U.S. every day. And the plastic bags are the number used in the United States every 5 seconds.

There are some (fairly mild) political overtones to his work, obviously. I won't be surprised if some readers are offended. But his message reflects an attitude that we're seeing more frequently in recent months -- the feeling that the throw-away attitude of our society has gone too far.

The Manufacturing is Cool Web site created by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers is worth adding to your company's list of Web links. (So is TryEngineering.org, a site I found thanks to SME's site).

I like the idea of getting young people interested in opportunities available at manufacturing companies, especially on the engineering side of the business. My trip to Antec and Plastics Encounter last week in Cincinnati really reinforced the idea that there are good careers available for bright young people in manufacturing -- especially ambitious students who are willing to travel and learn more than one language!

That said, I think Managing Automation online editor Chris Chiappinelli had a good point about the use of the word "cool" in his blog entry on the topic: "The Cool Kids Never Say They're Cool."

The new "Manufacturing is Cool" website from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers seems like another tired play for the young generation's attention, courtesy of out-of-touch adults. I love the effort, mind you. The site is an effort to drum up interest in manufacturing careers, and manufacturing does seem to need a new and interested crop of youngsters to fill out its thinning ranks. My gripe is with the branding. Telling kids that manufacturing is cool seems misguided. You won't catch Nike saying, "Buy these new Jordans, they're cool." And Apple ads won’t state that the new iPhone is cool. The presentation says it all.

Despite the grumbling, SME deserves applause for its effort. Some plastics groups might want to mimic the idea, or at least try to piggyback off of this effort.

Tofino, British Columbia, a small tourist town known for whale watching and other activities, has passed a ban on plastic bags, although it is asking residents and businesses to comply voluntarily.

The district council voted 6-1 to ban "petrochemical-based, single-use plastic bags," according to this report from westcoaster.ca, an independent online newspaper in Tofino.

“We’re hoping people will effectively switch to compostable bags,” said [councillor Derek] Shaw, who proposed the idea. “At this point, the ban is effectively sending a message to the community.”

Council has set no timeline for implementation.

The number of bags saved in Tofino would be small, but some tourists may carry away the village's message back to their hometowns after a visit. Unless bag makers can drum up some grass roots support for their product, it's going to be difficult to fight bans in every green-minded city and town in the world.

After a hurricane or tornado, it's typical to see an urgent need for some plastic products -- sheeting and tarps to cover roofs, for example, or water bottles. The Lawrence, Kan., Journal-World & News has a story today about how Greensburg, Kan., desperately needed plastic storage tubs and lids after a tornado flattened the town, and how residents of nearby Lawrence helped meet that need.

To the residents of Greensburg, Lawrence may forever be known as the plastic tub town.

Former Lawrence Mayor Marty Kennedy and his wife, Patty, this weekend delivered 500 waterproof plastic storage tubs and lids that community members donated after the Kennedys put out the call for contributions last week.

“We had so many people say that they couldn’t believe that people from so far away care so much,” Patty Kennedy said.

The couple distributed the 500 tubs in less than three hours. A sister-in-law who lives in rural Greensburg had told them the tubs were needed because people lacked a weatherproof place to store small items they recovered from the debris.

“We just proceeded up and down the blocks, and when we saw people digging through their rubble — and trust me, that’s all that’s left out there — we would ask them if they needed plastic tubs,” Marty Kennedy said.

The Berry Plastics Corp. plant in Lawrence donated 100 of the plastic containers and lids, according to the story. It's nice to see a plastics company involved in an effort like this. It's further proof that there are a lot of nice people who own, manage and work at plastics processors and their suppliers.

London's Financial Times reported today that four bidders have submitted "final offers" for GE Plastics, valuing the Pittsfield, Mass.-based engineering thermoplastic supplier at up to $12 billion.

According to the report, the bidders are Saudi Basic Industries Corp., Koch Industries (possibly working with private equity firm Blackstone), private equity firm Apollo, and polypropylene maker Basell.

A decision on the sale, part of GE's strategy of divesting commodity businesses to focus on higher-growth industries is due in the next two weeks. GE declined to comment.

The potential buyers are the same ones that have been mentioned for several months (although India's Reliance seems to have dropped out, or perhaps was never a serious candidate). If the $12 billion figure is accurate, then it looks like this sale will exceed General Electric's expectations.

BBC News has in interesting report on a potentially cool new product, artificial "plastic" blood that can be used as a substitute for the real thing in emergencies.

Researchers at Sheffield University said their creation could be a huge advantage in war zones.

They say that the artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to be kept cool and can be kept for longer.

The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body.

The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final prototype that would be suitable for biological testing.

The brief story says the new plastic blood will be part of the London Science Museum's new exhibit, "Plasticity – 100 years of making plastics," which opens on May 22.

Chrysler's new owner has a plastics industry pedigree. Cerberus Capital Management LP agreed today to buy 80.1 percent of Chrysler from Stuttgart, Germany's DaimlerChrysler AG for $7.4 billion. (Apparently that means DaimlerChrysler paid a bit too much for Chrysler nine years ago, when it paid $36 billion for the whole company).

If New York-based Cerberus rings a bell to Plastics News readers, it's because the company has bought and sold some plastics processing companies. In 2002, Cerberus bought fuel system supplier Pilot Industries Inc. out of Chapter 11, buying it for $41.5 million and selling it for $85.4 million less than a year later. (I guess that helps to answer the question, "Why would Cerberus invest in an automotive supplier?")

In 2004, Cerberus bought auto parts maker Peguform GmbH of Botzingen, Germany, which also was operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. And in 2005, Cerberus tried unsuccessfully to buy construction major Royal Group Technologies Ltd.

Royal eventually ended up instead in the hands of Georgia Gulf Corp.

Cerberus could be a short-term owner for Chrysler, according to a Bloomberg story that quotes David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Management may be negotiating with private-equity investors to give UAW leaders ammunition to convince rank-and-file workers of the need for concessions, he said. Meanwhile, other potential buyers including Chery Automobile Co. Ltd. of China or Renault SA and Peugeot SA of France are biding their time, Cole added.

``They're waiting for the private equity companies to do some of the cleanup work to make Chrysler an attractive deal, where right now it probably isn't,'' Cole said.

So expect a showdown between Cereberus and the United Auto Workers -- and expect it soon.

Columbus, Ohio-based profile extruder Crane Group today announced a new strategy and reorganization aimed at doubling the company's total sales, to $1 billion, by 2010. The announcement includes creating two new companies, Crane Group Cos. and Crane Investment Co.

Today Crane employs 1,300 and has 10 manufacturing facilities in six states, plus Chile and China. The company ranks 10th on our annual survey of North American pipe, profile and tubing extruders. But if we counted just profile extrusion, they would be No. 4.

“I don’t believe our grandfather could have ever dreamed of how dynamic and diverse the company he started in 1947 would become today,” said Tanny Crane, President and CEO of Crane Group. “The company has grown dramatically in the past decade both here in the U.S. and overseas. If we are going to double our sales by 2010, we need to provide focus for our core businesses and our investments, to insure their continued growth. I am confident we can do that by making necessary changes to our structure to ensure we remain a valued employer and strong competitor in the markets where we do business. These new subsidiaries also serve as a roadmap for our organization as we consider future acquisitions and expansion.”

The Columbus Dispatch has a story about the changes today, and quotes one of our staff reporters, Angie DeRosa, speculating that reaching its $1 billion goal might require doing some acquisitions. Calling one of the new units "Crane Investment Co." certainly sounds like they've got those kinds of plans, although Tanny Crane told the paper that most of the growth will come via expanding existing businesses.

Crane Group Cos. will include the firm's existing nine operations, which will be grouped into three new business units: Crane Service Group, Crane Marine Products and Crane Building Products. That last one includes most of the profile extrusion operations: TimberTech; Crane Performance Siding, custom profile extruder Crane Plastics, Crane Fencing Solutions and Evermark, which makes exterior door and frame components.

Here's yet another change in ownership in the plastics machinery sector: Private equity company Deutsche Beteiligungs AG has an agreement to buy Stuttgart, Germany-based compounding extruder maker Coperion Group.

The news release announcing the deal is vague, but hints at growth plans.

Backed by Deutsche Beteiligungs AG and its managed co-investment fund, Coperion plans to expand its service business in the coming years, improve operating processes and exploit market opportunities that arise from the strong and growing demand for its products, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.

Coperion is a major player in the extruder market, with 450 million euros in annual sales and a staff of 2,100. In addition to Germany, the company also has manufacturing and product development sites in the United States, India and China. The seller is another financial investor, Lyceum Capital.

Private equity buyers are making big waves in plastics machinery right now. Will Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. be the next big name in machinery to find a financial buyer?

Bloomberg is reporting today that Apollo Management LP, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and Basell NA each bid more than $10 billion for GE Plastics. The story quotes three unnamed "people with direct knowledge of the auction."

All three contenders have submitted offers and are meeting with GE executives this week to get more information on the Pittsfield, Massachusetts-based division, said the people, who declined to be identified because the process isn't public. The purchase may be announced as soon as this month.

Spokesmen for the companies who could be reached declined comment.

The story speculates that Apollo might have an edge because it bought GE Advanced Materials last year.

Saudi Basic's advantage, should it make the purchase, will stem from the Middle East chemical makers' access to abundant sources of raw materials such as natural gas. Sabic uses petroleum feedstock provided by state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, putting its costs lower than U.S.- based and European chemical companies.

Basell, the world's biggest maker of polypropylene, would be able to expand its lines of plastics and benefit from production volume. The Hoofddorp, Holland-based company was acquired by New York-based Access Industries Inc. two years ago.

This story has enough specific information about the deal that it sounds on target. I think Apollo, Sabic and Basell would all be very different owners, although any major changes in strategy could take months or years to develop. Stay tuned.

Bloomberg is reporting that Romeo Kreinberg and J. Pedro Reinhard, fired by Dow Chemical Co. for allegedly holding unauthorized merger talks, have sued the company and CEO Andrew Liveris for $675 million. The company, meantime, has filed a suit against the pair seeking to recover $50.9 million in bonuses paid to the pair.

``I am deeply saddened that I have to file a lawsuit to clear my good name and restore my reputation against a company to which I devoted 37 years of loyal service,'' Reinhard said in an e-mail statement. ``I have and will continue to categorically deny that I have been part of any secret effort to take over or acquire Dow Chemical.'' Dow's suit seeks $30.9 million from Reinhard and $20 million from Kreinberg, representing stock and cash bonuses awarded in the past three years, and an end to financial obligations to the men. The company also is seeking damages against Reinhard, 61, and Kreinberg, 56, for breach of fiduciary duties.

Kreinberg's lawyer, Stanley Arkin, told Bloomberg that "in light of the injury they did, [$675 million] was very modest." Kreinberg, who formerly headed Dow's plastics business, is suing for $400 million in defamation and $200 million for wrongful termination.

The lawsuits aren't a surprise. What will be surprise is if anyone in this group ever sees the inside of a courtroom. The question is, how mud will these guys throw before they settle?

I'll be blogging from Antec 2007 and Plastics Encounter in Cincinnati for the next few days. One of the highlights today was the speech by incoming Society of Plastics Engineers President Vicki Flaris, who spoke about the vision and direction of SPE.

One of her main points was how globalization is changing the plastics industry, and how the changes are affecting SPE:

The plastics industry is truly global. Manufacturing and research are migrating to China and India. It is expected that by 2020, the Asian region will be the leading producer of polymers. New developments for polymers will occur at an extremely fast pace in cross-disciplinary fields such as biochemistry, electronics and communications. International corporations are expected to spend most of their R&D money in China, the U.S., and India, in that order.

New centers of materials R&D are emerging in Singapore, China, South Korea and Taiwan, owing to major government funding. In 2000, 500,000 engineering degrees were awarded in China out of 1 million engineering degrees awarded globally in materials science and engineering.

SPE's motto for 2007-08 is "No borders," because, she said, "There are no geographical borders for polymer research, there are no borders for where extra polymer capacity is added, and there are no borders where the information can, and will, flow."

This trend isn't new, but it's interesting to step back and get someone else's perspective on how globalization is changing plastics, and to see how SPE is reacting. I think they're on the right track.

A May 2 decision to recall some vinyl baby bibs because they contain lead is generating a lot of headlines. What's interesting to me is how the issue got attention in the first place: a woman in suburban Chicago decide to test her grandson's vinyl-backed bib.

The Arlington Heights, Ill., Daily Herald has a follow-up story today on Marilyn Furer, the grandmother-activist, whose grandson Jensen started the ball rolling:

Jensen would also put the bib in his mouth when he was hungry, something that came to Marilyn Furer’s attention when he started using the vinyl-backed bibs.

It caused Marilyn to think back to reports she had heard of lead being found in plastic school lunch boxes.

“So there I think, hmmm, plastic in the mouth, plastic in school lunch boxes. What the heck, I’ll just go get a (lead testing) kit just to play it safe. I never thought it would come out like that.”

Using a household lead test kit produced by Homax Products Inc., she crushed the two points on the barrel of the testing swab, shook the swab and squeezed it until a yellow liquid appeared on the tip. Then she rubbed the swab tip on the test area. To her surprise, the swab tip turned pink, indicating the presence of lead. She wound up testing 20 bibs, with eight of them yielding a positive result.

She sent the bibs, which were made in China and sold at Wal-Mart, to the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, Calif., which had done the research on the lunch boxes.

Testing commissioned by the center revealed that one of the Baby Connection brand vinyl bibs, which were sold exclusively at Wal-Mart stores, had a lead level of 9,700 parts per million, more than 16 times greater than the legal limit for lead in paint.

Now Marilyn Furer wants a ban on lead-based products used by infants and children.

The Vinyl Insitute reacted well to this story, putting out a news release yesterday explaining its position.

“Lead does not need to be used in babies’ bibs,” said Tim Burns, president of the Vinyl Institute. “You don’t need lead to make vinyl, and most vinyl products don’t contain lead.”

He added: “This is a lead issue, not a vinyl issue. It appears that although lead may not have been added deliberately, it made its way into products from some environmental or workplace source. It is critical for manufacturers, importers and retailers globally to work together to set and enforce policies to address these concerns.”

As the Daily Herald story notes, the bibs were imported from China. As we've also seen from the melamine/pet food story, new measures are desperately needed to ensure the safety of products being imported into North America.

Here's a Q&A interview from CNN about a New Yorker who is making a living as a Lego artist.

What's the difference between being a guy who plays with Legos and a Lego artist? "I get paid!" says Nathan Sawaya, who adds: "In all seriousness, I've tried to take Lego in a direction it's never been before. I've tried to put it in a museum setting, and I've created very large-scale sculptures that are on tour for the next couple of years. And that's something that I think is a little different from your average hobbyist who's really just building for fun."

The highlight of the story for me: Sawaya used to be a lawyer, but gave up that career to pursue his dream of building Lego art.

At least now he's a contributing member of society...

There's also a weird photo of Sawaya "bathing" in a bathtub filled with blue Legos. If you'd like to see his work in person, note that he has a touring exhibit, "The Art of the Brick," that will open at the Discovery Center Museum in Rockford, Ill., on June 15.

Get ready for a lot of hype about Surface, a cool looking new product from Microsoft Corp. Super-rich geek leader Bill Gates gave NBC's Today a peak at the product yesterday:

“Pretty exciting, eh?” Gates said with a sly smile, when he put his hand down on what looked initially like a low, black coffee table: At the touch of his hand, the hard, plastic tabletop suddenly dissolved into what looked like tiny ripples of water. The ‘water’ responded to each of his fingers and the ripples rushed quickly away in every direction.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Try it.” When I placed my hand on the table at the same time, there were more ripples.

It took a moment to appreciate what was happening. Every hand motion Gates or I did was met with an immediate response from the table. There was no keyboard. There was no mouse. Just our gestures.

“All you have to do is reach out and touch the Surface,” Gates told me with barely concealed pride. “And it responds to what you do.”

In an industry whose bold pronouncements about the future have taught me the benefits of skepticism, Surface took my breath away. If the Surface project rollout goes as planned in November, it could alter the way everyday Americans control the technology that currently overwhelms many of us.

The story says the impact-resistant plastic top skin hides five infrared scanners, a projector and a wireless modem. "The scanners recognize objects and shapes placed on the top and respond to them accordingly. For example, if the scanners recognize fingers, and the fingers have been placed in color circles that appear on the surface, the projector shows colored lines that follow the tracings and movements of your fingers. Meanwhile, an internal modem sends and receives signals from any electronic device placed on it."

The whole thing is hard to describe, so if you're interested in more information I suggest checking out the Microsoft link up above. I surfed around the site a bit and couldn't find an answer to my main question: How much will it cost?

The Kansas City Star is reporting that Terry Sutter, former CEO of Covalence Specialty Materials, may be named president of the four-campus University of Missouri.

This is the top job at the university: According to the report, "the president is the chief executive and academic officer of the system. All faculty and other university employees, including chancellors over each campus, report to the president." Sutter left Covalence, formerly Tyco's plastics division, last year.

Two sources with close ties to university officials said they had been told that curators were leaning toward Sutter because of his business background. Curators have said from the beginning that their search for a president would include people from the business world.

Sutter's resume also includes stints at Cytec Industries Inc., Honeywell Inc. and AlliedSignal. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from MU, according to the report.

Sutter spoke at our Plastics News Executive Forum back in 2004, and he impressed me as a bright guy who had a good grasp on a wide variety of issues.

A county commissioner in Alabama wants to revoke a tax break that was granted to a local GE Plastics plant in the early 1980s because the business is being sold to Saudi Basic Industries Corp.

This story from the Montgomery Advertiser explains Lowndes County Commissioner Robert Harris' plan to revoke a property tax break for GE Plastics' Burkville plant.

Harris, who called Lowndes the second-poorest county in Alabama, doesn't care for a foreign government owning the major employer in the county.

"We are looking at the contract itself," he said of the ongoing tax break for the plant. "We don't know clearly yet if we can do anything."

SABIC is a state-owned company that produces basic chemicals, intermediates, specialty products, polymers, fertilizers and metals.

It recently announced it will purchase the GE Plastics division for $11.6 billion, and part of the deal will include the Burkville plant.

If the county's legal team decides the commission can change or revoke the tax break, Harris thinks that will happen quickly.

"I am sure we would not have any other choice but to look at that," he said.

This is just about the craziest idea I've heard. If Toyota (a "foreign" company) wanted to build a plant in Lowndes County, would the commission give it a tax break? Of course it would.

The really surprising thing to me is how this bias is cropping up in towns where GE Plastics has a long history as a responsible corporate citizen. Remember that back in March, the Berkshire, Mass., Eagle ran a very stern editorial that called a proposed GE Plastics sale to Sabic "the worst case scenario for the sale of the company." That column went on to make a link between Sabic and terrorism.

I think this anti-Saudi bias is going to continue to surface. It will be very interesting to see how Sabic, and GE Plastics, deal with the issue. Perhaps we're already seeing part of the strategy. At Chinaplas last week, one observer pointed out that none of the executives at Sabic's booth were wearing traditional robes -- they were all dressed in western-style business suits. Was Sabic trying to send a subtle message?

Here's an update from California: a bill that would ban use of phthalates in children's toys was rejected yesterday, according to this report in the Sacramento Bee.

The measure, Assembly Bill 1108, would have prohibited phthalates from teethers, rattles, rubber duckies, plastic play books and other products designed for children younger than 3.

The Assembly voted twice on the measure Tuesday. The final tally was 36-31, five votes short of the majority needed for passage.

Most Republicans opposed the bill, but the fatal blow was dealt by 13 Democrats, most of them moderates, who abstained from voting.

According to the story, Fiona Ma, the sponsor of the bill, may ask for another vote "in coming days."

Maybe it's a guy thing. The "Build-A-Bear" concept never really made sense to me -- why would kids stand in line to make a stuffed animal at the mall? Yet a related concept, covered by the New York Times today, looks perfectly reasonable to me: shops where kids can go to build custom plastic cars.

The stores, called Ridemakerz, are related to the Build-A-Bear workshops -- in fact, Build-A-Bear founder Maxine Clark invested $3 million in Larry Andreini's concept for the "build a toy car" shops, plus an estimated $15 million in support, according to the Times story.

Fathers and sons make up 70 percent of his target audience. Here’s what they can expect at the Ridemakerz store.

Customers select a chassis type (street or monster); body styles (stock or custom, a Ridemakerz brand hot rod, a Ford Mustang GT or Dodge Ram pickup, to name a few options); paint schemes; sound effects (for example, sirens or race sounds) and style of locomotion (free wheel or radio control).

After the 10- to 12-inch cars are assembled, there are ample customizing and accessorizing options: tire treads, grille guards, side pipes, snowboard racks and decals. Mr. Andreini estimates that a fully tricked-out vehicle will run about $75, including $25 for radio control. For the budget-minded, there’s a stock tuner car for $12.

Seems like a neat idea, although one analyst quoted in the story noted that "Hard plastic isn't as inherently profitable as cloth."

What a story to have waiting in my email box when I returned to the states: last fall, Dow Chemical Co. pursued a deal to acquire DuPont Co.

The story is on the New York Times' Web site, featured in a double-barreled lead about how the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating events that led Dow to fire two senior officials, Romeo Kreinberg and J. Pedro Reinhard, over alleged unauthorized M&A talks.

Last fall, Dow made an overture to acquire DuPont in a deal worth more than $40 billion, according to people involved in the talks. If the approach had ultimately led to a deal, it would have combined the largest and third-largest chemical companies in the United States. ExxonMobil is No. 2.

Shares of Dow and DuPont traded somewhat erratically at the time, though neither company disclosed the approach. From September to December, shares of DuPont climbed 15 percent.

DuPont rebuffed Dow's advances and never engaged in negotiations, these people said. Dow's chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris, sits on the board of Citigroup with Alain J. P. Belda, the chief executive of Alcoa, who at the time of the overture was also a director of DuPont; Mr. Belda stepped down from DuPont's board in March.

Dow declined to comment. A DuPont spokeswoman did not return a call last night seeking comment.

It doesn't look like Dow is in a good position to make a big purchase like DuPont right now. It looks like top Dow executives might be tied up in investigations and lawsuits for several months, if not longer. But if things clear up later this year, what other target might Dow want to pursue?

Some of the top headlines on Wall Street this week actually were generated in China, and it was interesting to see the coverage from this side of the world.

One of the biggest was the news that Jianyin Investment Co. Ltd., China's new state-owned investment company, was going to take a $3 billion stake in Blackstone Group, a New York-based private equity company.

Blackstone owns hundreds of billions in investments, including a handful in the plastics business: Klockner Pentaplast GmbH & Co., Celanese AG and Graham Packaging Co. LP.

Seeing first-hand just a small fraction of the amount of economic growth and investment in China, I'm less surprised that the state has this kind of money to make into a company like Blackstone. Some of the coverage I've seen about Blackstone's IPO makes me wonder why anyone would invest in such a scheme. But when you have as much money as the West is pumping into China right now, you can't invest it all in McDonald's franchises and T-bills.

You have to bet big.

I took a walk around the entire Chinaplas show floor this afternoon, because I had not visited a few halls yet (I didn't realize one was in a tent outside... it was quite warm and humid out there).

Here are some of my impressions, after seeing many of the smaller Asia-based exhibitors:

1) A lot of the tooling and equipment that I saw was quite impressive. I wonder, are they five or 10 years behind "state-of-the-art"? And how quickly are they catching up?

2) There were a lot of people looking at the equipment ...and lots of "sold" signs on machines.

3) I saw guys at a few booths diligently working on machines that were sitting idle. That's not unheard of at other trade shows, obviously. But it seemed like there was more than usual today.

4) Perhaps most striking, I was surprised to see machines operating without the precautions that I see at NPE and K. OK, I'm an adult and I know not to stick my hand in the working printing and thermoforming machines. (Or to walk up on a 2- or 3-story high blown film tower). Still, seeing situations like that made me stop and stare for a moment.

Ken Fassett, global sales manager for RJG Inc., will come home to Traverse City, Mich., with a little something special from the Chinaplas trade show.

He'll come home with five stitches and a couple of bottles of antibiotics.

The story started on Monday, the first day of the show here in Guangzhou. Ken was cutting some plastic rings in RJG's booth, in order to attach exhibitor badges to some lanyards.

"I'm better with a molding machine than with a pocket knife," Fassett joked. RJG provides a variety of services to injection molders, including training and systems integration. Anyway, he sliced his left ring finger pretty badly.

"I was really afraid that I would have to go to a hospital," which would have meant missing a big chunk of the first day of the trade show. One of his colleagues suggested going to an on-site clinic on the trade fair grounds.

The little clinic actually stitched up the wound on the spot, and also gave him some pain killers, antibiotics, and an IV (after he passed out).

Unlike some U.S. hospitals, the doctor didn't ask first if Ken had health insurance. The care was quite a bargain by Western standards.

"The whole thing cost me 236 RMB," or less than $25. That included all the medications.

Fassett called his doctor back in Traverse City on Monday night, described the care he had received and explained what medications he was taking. The doctor told him everything sounded good.

Fassett ended up with a heavily bandaged finger that was throbbing pretty bad when I saw him on Tuesday afternoon.

Oh, plus one more thing.

"Now I have one more story from the road," Fassett said. At least it has a happy ending.