I tagged along with my friend Karen to Target the other day (when you don’t drive, tagging along is an excellent mode of transportation) and inadvertently found myself committing what Reverend Billy would call a “retail intervention.”

“Maybe I’ll get a Barbie for Daisy,” Karen said as she shopped for the kids on her Christmas list. She doesn’t have a tv, so she sometimes misses out on the scandals du jour.

“Um, didn’t you hear about the recall?” I asked. I had to break the bad news that Mattel (along with a number of other manufacturers) had been forced to pull a whole bunch of its made-in-China stuff off the shelves after various toys tested positive for lead or other contaminants.

Karen waved her arms at the aisles of plastic dolls and action figures and wailed, “what am I supposed to buy?”

Shoppers are asking that question all over the country this holiday season, and thanks to a new service from a website called Moms Rising, you can actually get an answer right on the spot while you’re shopping.

Moms Rising lets you use your cellphone and text-messaging to access a database created by healthytoys.org of over 1,200 toys and other products to see if they contain toxic chemicals. You can also search for toys with low-toxic ratings, as their website explains:

“To narrow your search results, you can text “healthytoys [low] [searchterm]” to narrow your results. For example, if you’re at Target and want to find the toys there that got a low rating, text: “healthytoys low target” to 41411.

We didn’t know about healthytoys.org, so Karen ended up buying Daisy a sweater instead. But next time she goes toy shopping, I guess I’d better tag along again so she can consult healthytoy.org’s database. Because along with not owning a tv, Karen doesn’t own a cellphone. She’s got a car, though; between the two of us, we have all the technology we need to finesse this toy-shopping thing.

For more info go to healthytoys.org.