The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), signed into law last August, calls for third party lead testing of all products for children under age 12. According to reporter Alissa Harris, “On February 10, . . . all products for children under 12 — books, games, toys, sports equipment, furniture, clothes, DVDs, and just about every other conceivable children’s gadget and gewgaw — must be tested for lead, and fall below a new 600 part-per-million limit, or face the landfill. Thanks to a September 12 memo from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the lead limit applies not only to new products, but also to inventory already on store shelves.”
Testing for each item can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, and somehow each retailer is responsible for its current stock–no overlap from certified publishers. Libraries appear to be on the hook for certifying that their children’s books are lead-free, even if the process for making the books uses no lead. From the same article in The Phoenix:
Historically, books have been considered more dangerous to read than to eat. Regardless, a memo from the CPSC, issued the day before Christmas Eve, explicitly quashed any hope that books might escape the new law. To make matters worse, even publishers that have already had their products tested for lead will be forced to retest. In the same memo, existing test results based on “soluble lead” — a measure of whether lead will migrate out of a product — were rejected by the CPSC because they did not measure “total lead content.”
The CPSC has not issued any ruling on whether libraries, schools, and other institutions that loan — rather than sell — books will be subject to the law. Without such clear guidance, says Adler, schools and libraries should assume they have to comply.
It appears thrift stores and other second-hand shops will be exempt, so maybe libraries will be spared as well. The safety act is intended to stop poor quality imported toys, like those recalled several times in the last couple years. How can the Feds follow through with this gnat-straining law and actually put several booksellers, educational material retailers, and toy-makers out of business? If I’ve read the news aright, they won’t force anyone to close down. They will only threaten to sue them into the ground if one of their products has a lead problem. That’s modern day mercy for you.
Today’s Grand Forks Herald says that a Thursday memo from the CPSC backed off from applying the lead testing to resellers. They merely need to refrain from selling items likely to contain lead.
What it sounded like to me was that they really didn’t back off from applying the law as broadly as possible, but rather that enforcement efforts would be aimed at bigger fish.
Forcing by threat of law retailers to test all of their products make little sense to me. Manufactors and publishers could have their processes inspected and certified, but why should retailers or libraries pay hundreds to thousands for individual and repetitive testing?
The problem was that the legislation was written with vague language. So when the regulatory agency went to transform that into regulations, the wrote them with excessive broadness and inclusivity in order to make sure they were covering all their bases. In other words, Congress said that all products sold must be lead free. The CPSC interpreted that to include not only newly manufactured products but also existing inventory.
That kinda makes sense, which is why Congress must not act under in panic under public pressure on anything. I think they should also smack each other around a bit sometimes.
I think we may see here a hint as to why some great cities in the ancient (South American) world have been found totally abandoned. (i.e. without any signs of war or disaster.)