• Wall Street Journal , Tuesday, December 16, 2008 11 AM

To the consternation of retailers and manufacturers who would cut corners on toy safety, there's a new way for grownups to indulge in their latent war-game fantasies and be do-gooders at the same time: They can become guerilla plaything testers. Here's how it works.

You get this clunky-looking device that looks like a cross between a Flash Gordon ray gun and those gizmos that grocery clerks use to slap the price tags on cans of pickled kumquats. It uses a technology called X-ray fluorescence -- or XRF -- and it comes packaged in devices such as the Niton XRF Analyzer from Thermo Fisher Scientific. They actually are ray guns that can instantly determine the levels of elements such as lead, cadmium and titanium in objects.

Consumer watchdog groups are arming volunteers with the devices and then sending out press releases disclosing their findings -- sometimes without first informing the affected retailers (from Wal-Mart to mom-and-pops) or manufacturers, Melanie Trottman reports.

The Toy Industry Association says the X-ray-gun testing method can be faulty and unfair. Jon Shein, a marketing director at Thermo Fisher Scientific, says his company has "never suggested that this technology should replace certified testing labs. We have always promoted the product as a screening tool."

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