S. 374 would amend the Consumer Product Safety Act to provide regulatory relief to small and family-owned businesses.
Read more at Washington Watch The Senator's announcement.
Text of the bill- a pdf document.
Article at CNN's Money- I think this part is funny:
Last Friday, the CPSC delayed the third-party testing and certification requirement by a year, giving companies a new deadline of Feb, 10, 2010.
According to the CPSC's statement, makers of children's products will not need to test or certify their products to meet the new requirements for at least one more year. But they still need to "meet the lead and phthalates limits, mandatory toy standards and other requirements" by next week's deadline.
Rhodes and others said this new action from the CPSC "doesn't make sense."
"On the one hand, you're saying companies have to meet the stricter standards but they don't have to test [products] to ensure that products meet these standards," Rhodes said. "How are parents supposed to know what is safe if it hasn't been tested?"
Alison Rhodes is a child safety expert and founder of Safetymom.com. What kind of amuses me about this is that this is exactly what happened with the assurances about small businesses and thrift shops that were supposed to make all the Moms complaining about this bill go away- the CPSC and Congress assured us that while the bill said we had to do the testing, they weren't coming after us (no word on fifty states attorneys generals or the anonymous complaint/informant portions of the bill, or the consumer groups saying small crafters should NOT be exempt and vague hints that they would be looking closely at such micro-businesses)- and that thrift shops had to meet the standards but didn't have to test.
NOW we see that being told to meet the standards but testing not required is not so helpful and useful a situation as we had formerly been told.
David Arkush, director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen's Congress Watch, cautioned that some businesses might seize the apparent confusion and not move quickly to comply with the new standards.
"If they do, it's at their own risk," Arkush said. "Most retailers are worried about declining sales in this economy. They could lose even more sales."
Craig Shearman, vice president for government affairs with The National Retail Federation, NRF, says:
the stay on testing doesn't preempt a consumer rights group or state attorney general from doing their own random testing on products sold in stores.
[...]
"Health and safety of children is the No. 1 concern for retailers, but Congress clearly didn't give CPSC enough time to develop the rules and regulations to implement the new standards," Shearman said.
This new law is going to have a terrible effect in our landfills:
National Association of Manufacturers' spokesman Rosario Palmieri said the testing delay offers no relief to its members.
"Retailers are still telling us that we have to meet the new standards and prove it through certification," Palmieri said. "In some cases, if you can't get the proof, retailers will send the product back and it will be destroyed.
USA Today has an article- the first half is all about toxic toys, only in the second half to read about the problems the bill causes. They intereview the owner of a poncho making company, a small family business, who has tested her fabrics and they are lead free, but the bill as stands will require her to spend 90,000 a year on third party component testing after August, and that's going to put her out of business.
And please note that here is another pronouncement from an official that contradicts previous pronouncements from officials, including the Congressmen who wrote the bill:
CPSC spokesman Joseph Martyak says his commission has gotten thousands of calls and e-mails from concerned small-business owners and even school librarians.
Some librarians told the commission that the law would put them out of work because children's books made before 1980, when lead was allowed in ink, would be banned. He says the agency is "trying to find a way of addressing children's books."
"A lot of parents are on blogs saying, 'This is crazy,' " says Martyak. "They say, 'What are we going to do if children can't get the books they want in the library?' or that '$20 gets us so much in a thrift shop.' "
It's an unfathomable case of a government gone mad to many small-business owners, including thrift-store owner Sharon Smith of Portland, Ore. She has tested the zipper pulls and buttons on used kids' clothing but can't draw enough conclusions to confidently sell anything but zipper-, snap- and button-free pullovers unless preowned clothing is exempted.
Martyak says the commission would not be able to exempt used clothing, only certain types of apparel such as plain T-shirts.
There are several uninformed comments to that article- some of you may wish to go offer some factual corrections.
I see why Thomas Moore is positioning himself for job security, and why he has demonstrated so little understanding of how a business works.
CraftSanity has a podcast with the wonderful Walter Olson (he wrote the Forbes articles and blogs at Overlawyered)
He points out that you need a companion guide to read the law because the CPSIA contains so many cross-references to other statutes by number, sometimes adding a new clause or a word change without quoting the law in full.
He points out that the law has written is really only something companies with a legal department can maneuver through. And even some lawyers are finding some of the requirements and standards baffling.
Legislate in haste, repent at leisure, he says, and we get the most sweeping laws when there is a panic, particular about children. He says the way things work is that Congress outsources the actual drawing up of the law to somebody else, not even necessarily a Congressional employee. Very likely, he thinks, this was drafted by a lawyer with one of the consumer groups involved (PIRG, PUblic Citizen, etc). This would make sense and explain several of the weaknesses of the law. PIRG is under the impression that a small business is one making 50,000 products a year, and while the majority of the scares came from mass production lines in China, they will probably be the last ones standing from this legislation. It's a very informative interview.
One point I would add to the library discussion- he says libraries have lawyers looking at the bill who believe that they will be impacted even though they don't sell books. But libraries do sell books- the older books, those most likely to have lead in the ink. Library booksales are a huge fund raiser. Our family's 8,000 book library is largely stocked by discard books from library booksales.
Waxman has written back to Nord and Moore- I haven't had time to read it yet. On Twitter Walter Olson is characterizing it as "we're calling shots, but any failures are your fault."
Rick Woldenberg isn't impressed, either:
Request for relief from NAM, which Moore will probably refuse, and Nord approve, leaving us where we started.
WhimsicalWalny laments that Schoolhouse Rock let her down- especially poignant given the way Walter Olson suggests this bill was probably written.
The New York Times notices that the CPSIA just closed the market for motorbikes and dirt-biking for kids under 12. This also affects the bikes consumers already own, as the motorbike manufacturers are recommending that their dealers no longer handle repairs for these items.
I expect this makes the consumer advocacy groups behind this bill very happy, as I can't imagine they like motorbikes for kids. Personally, neither do it, but I've known people who love it, and it's not going to go away. Far from making kids safer by making their bikes extinct on the basis of lead in the brakes (which are not going to be ingested by kids), it puts them at risk:
On Monday, the American Motorcyclist Association, which represents riders, sent a letter to the commission in support of the industry’s requests. In addition to the difficulty faced by manufacturers and dealers, the association’s letter suggests that making smaller machines unavailable could lead to children riding machines that are too large:
If emergency relief is not granted immediately, some consumers will very likely purchase vehicles that are physically too large for young riders, exposing them to unnecessary risk.
Another unintended consequence.
The AP says the law is applauded by parents and consumer advocates and jeered by industry- I am a parent, not in the industry, and I am jeering.
Great Gravy. Pryor says it's all Nord's fault because she had, like, five or six months and he doesn't know what else she's been doing. There is no mention of the fact that Congress also put all the nation's swimming pools under CPSC jurisdiction, Nord says she's met every deadline imposed by Congress, and there was a new Gasoline burn prevention act they had to regulate, nor does the AP note that the Commission is seriously, and deliberately, undermanned by Congress and underfunded as well.
Excellent post by Walter Olson at Overlawyered giving his own round-up of several articles and blogposts.
Which is where I learned that John Holbo at Crooked Timber has added this comment to his excellent post (scroll down to the bottom of the comments, or rather, read all the comments):
I must say: I’m increasingly convinced that this is an unusually horrible law. Unless its defenders, the PIRG folks maybe, have good responses to what look to me like a huge pile of quite devastating objections.
He gets it. That made me so happy I read it five more times just to keep smiling.
A Phoenix paper has an excellent story on the government's war on toys.
And shoes
socks
underwear
scarves
shirts
pants
skirts
skates
bikes
bike helmets
mittens
scarves
basketballs
marbles
skateboards
carseats
linens
notebooks
pencils
pens
paper
books
movies
computer games
music
cards
board games
chess sets
magnets
microscopes
magnifying glasses
math manipulatives
school desks
chairs
science kits
model kits
craft kits
blankets
musical instruments
flashcards
bibs
high chairs
pajamas
dice
lunchboxes
baby slings
You could go on and on and on- just sit and think of all the things your kids 12 and under use in a day, a week, a year.
It's a wonder the government isn't forcing breastfeeding women to get their breastmilk certified as lead and phthalate free, but I suspect it's only a matter of time. Pin It
