NEW YORK -- Santa's elves are under strict new guidelines for making toys as safe as possible this holiday season.
The goal is to avoid a repeat of 2007 when millions of products were recalled.
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Although many past recalls involved unsafe levels of lead,
Inez Tenenbaum, chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said the current federal limit on lead in toys is the lowest in the world.
Congress has also set a cap on cadmium for kids' jewelry this year. All children's products sold in the U.S. as of Jan. 1 have to go through independent third party testing.
"These are laboratories that test for lead, for cadmium, for other toxic substances, that do drop tests to make sure you don't have small parts that come loose so a child has a choking hazard," Tenenbaum said.
The toy industry association says it's long been supportive of third party testing with many major companies and retailers already doing such independent tests.
Consumers can report problems directly, and get company responses, through a new CPSC database called SaferProducts.gov.
"Anyone can go on the website and pull up information, which gives information on what someone else's experience is," Tenenbaum said.
She noted that the vast majority of toys recalls are due to a defective design.
(NBC News)