That list of reasons to worry about Chinese imports is getting longer.

Consider the June 13 recall of 1.5 million Thomas & Friends toy train parts, after lead paint was found to have been used on them at the Chinese factory where they're made. Ingesting lead can cause long-term neurological problems.

Apparently the lead paint was used for up to two years before it was discovered. Or at least, before it was discovered by anyone who cared to put a stop to it.

Why would any company choose to have toys made at a factory that didn't monitor for lead paint? The RC2 Corp., which markets the trains, hasn't said much, but typically companies' answer is this: Americans want low prices. Things made in China are cheaper. Workers earn a fraction of U.S. pay. And, one surmises, those annoying government regulations are not nearly so annoying in China.

The unsafe toy trains are just another item on a growing list of concerns about Chinese manufacturing. This spring, pet food containing a Chinese-made ingredient tainted with an industrial plastic killed dogs and cats in the U.S. The bad pet food then got into the human food chain after it was fed to chickens, hogs and fish.

Last year at least 51 people died in Panama when an industrial poison labeled as glycerin, a sweetener, was used to make cough syrup. The fake glycerin was traced to China. It turns out virtually the same thing happened 10 years ago in Haiti. A New York Times investigation published June 17 described how fake glycerin, traced to a state-owned company in China, killed dozens of Haitian children. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration tried to trace that mislabeled glycerin but got no help from the Chinese government. Business records were withheld or destroyed. Eventually the FDA had to give up.

Consider:

Of all the products recalled in the U.S. so far this year, 60 percent came from China. That proportion is up from 36 percent in 2000.

All of the 24 toys recalled in the U.S. for safety reasons this year were made in China.

Of all toys sold in this country, 70 to 80 percent are made in China.

The number of recalled products hit a record last year — 467.

If you're relying on U.S. inspectors to catch unsafe imports, you're living in a fantasy world. The Consumer Product Safety Commission staff was cut by more than 10 percent in the past two years. Fewer regulators are available to monitor more imports.

And U.S. consumers can't even do their own monitoring of whether they're buying Chinese products. U.S. food and drug-makers aren't required to label the country of origin of their ingredients.

As if all that weren't enough to make Americans wary of Chinese manufacturing, reports emerged last week of hundreds of workers, including children, being kept as slave laborers in central China.

Is this really how Americans want their food, medicines, toys and other products to be made? With so many goods once made here now being made in China, shouldn't U.S. consumers demand that the safeguards that were in place at U.S. factories be in place in China?

If those safeguards aren't there — and there's growing evidence they aren't — shouldn't consumers start demanding more than just low prices? Things like toy trains that won't cause brain damage. Pet food that isn't fatal to Fido. And cough syrup that only kills coughs, not kids.