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Congress Should Return Toy Safety Regulation to the CPSC
June 1, 2009 by Dawn
Filed under Featured Articles
By Rick Woldenberg
Special to Roll Call
June 1, 2009, 12:45 p.m.
I am a toymaker and I do not make “toxic toys.” I never thought I would have to make that statement, but unfortunately, all children’s products companies remain under assault by consumer groups capitalizing on a notorious series of toy recalls in 2007 and 2008 to propagate misconceptions about safety.
Having pushed Congress to pass the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act last year, these same groups now refuse to acknowledge the flaws in this law. Despite an outcry over the overly broad reach of the new law, a misguided labeling policy and the devastating retroactive application of the new standards, Congress has refused to budge. Politics has taken over children’s product safety.
Toys and other children’s products have an enviable record of safety. While a few large recalls tarnished the reputation of the toy industry in 2007 and 2008, very few products and companies were involved in these recalls. For perspective, consider that Amazon.com alone offers more than 600,000 different toys and games today, an assortment likely to grow substantially as Christmas approaches. In 2007 and 2008, a total of 66 toys, equal to about 0.01 percent of Amazon’s current lineup, were recalled for lead in the paint, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. There were even fewer lead-in-paint recalls of all other children’s products (54) in the same period. Exactly one injury was reported from these incidents over 24 months. Notably, no recalls for reported injuries from phthalates were imposed in this period. Given the virtual absence of injuries at this high point of product recalls, it is incredible that the prior law is not regarded as “precautionary.”
While other product defects resulted in recalls of toys and other children’s products in 2007 and 2008, the fact remains that toys and other children’s products are not “toxic” and 99.99-plus percent of the many millions of children’s products (apparel, footwear, toys, books, bicycles, pens, electronics, bedding and so on) will never be recalled for any reason. Smearing our industry with allegations of toxicity spreads unjustified fear, talks down our businesses and our future, and victimizes legitimate, responsible businesses. Consumers also suffer as good products and good companies exit the market under withering attack.
The problem began when Congress usurped the CPSC’s role in making safety assessments. Despite regularly lauding the performance of the professional staff at the CPSC, Congress limited the agency’s discretion by imposing inflexible “one-size-fits-all” standards to a broad class of products cutting across many markets. As implementation of the new law became mired in stays and disputes over “unintended consequences,” the consumer advocates and their supporters on Capitol Hill faced an ironic dilemma — their long-anticipated new safety law was turning into a system of noncompliance. Yet instead of acknowledging the problems with the law and opening it up for reasonable fixes, the CPSIA backers stood their ground and implicitly defended a potentially unsafe legal environment where real bad guys may go free. Their legacy of landmark legislation has degenerated into a fracas in which neither safety nor the integrity of the market for children’s products is a primary concern.
The environmental and consumer groups promote the concept that American safety laws need to operate on a “better safe than sorry” basis. If 99.99 percent of all children’s products are safe (not subject to recall) in an active period like 2007-2008, how is a change to a different form of “precautionary” law going to make children safer? If the track record of the agency is to recall products in anticipation of injury, haven’t we already benefited from more than enough precaution? Even the distracting contention that implementation problems have been caused by the acting CPSC chairman is not supported by the record. Until the May 13 split vote on tracking labels, the two commissioners (Democrat Thomas Moore and Republican Nancy Nord) voted together on every previous CPSIA ballot (23 in all).
The issue of children’s safety is trivialized by the assumption that only Congress has the integrity or character to protect children. It is also an insult to companies like ours whose mission is to help educate children. It is unthinkable that we would allow children to be harmed using our products — and we never previously needed a coercive safety law to embrace that philosophy. We are no different than the thousands of other law-abiding companies who tirelessly serve children’s markets in so many important ways. Unfortunately, if the law remains in its present form, many of our safe elementary math, science and reading products will no longer be available to help children learn and make a better life. That’s a high price to pay for “better safe than sorry.”
It’s time for the politics of safety to take a backseat to effective safety administration. The fundamental flaw of the CPSIA must be corrected, namely that the responsibility for determining whether products are safe or unsafe should be restored to the experts at the CPSC. Wasteful provisions like tracking labels and retroactive application of the new standards should be dropped, and penalties should be refocused on truly bad acts, not on technical violations that discourage commerce. Congress should take this action promptly to restore order to the marketplace and empower the new commissioners to do their job of protecting children. With an ability to focus its considerable resources according to risk of injury, the CPSC can again establish rationality and predictability as a hallmark of American safety regulation.
Rick Woldenberg is chairman of Learning Resources Inc. and the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety.
I am a kitchen table manufacturer who enjoys making things for my 3 grandchildren and then making a few extra to sell on line. I have started to only design items that I can make from the CSPIA’s allowed list. I no longer can make my granddaughter a dress with a zipper or button to hold it together, so she no longer gets cute handmade ones. She has to wear the junk that gets imported from China and sold at Walmart. The same goes for my grandsons. If the manufacturers have to test their zippers for lead before they can sell them to me, why do I have to have these same zippers tested again to prove no lead was put into them in the trucks on their way to JoAnn Fabrics? Or are the JoAnn employees adding lead to them? This makes no sense to me what so ever.
The labeling law also doesn’t make sense as far as what I do is concerned. I make 2 dresses. One for my granddaughter and one to sell. Is my batch number 2? How do I permanently label this dress? No one can tell me. Do I write on it with black permanent marker? Can I make a tag to sew in similar to the one that currently says, “Made with love by Grandma.” That tag is not permanent. If it itches her, my daughter cuts it out. How do I make a permanent label on a little cotton sundress? What about her matching hairbow? I used to make them with 1/4 inch wide ribbon. Where should I put the permanent label?
I don’t mind complying with the law, but the powers that be should have enough respect for me and others like me, to answer these questions so we know what to do.
I am not good at persuasive writing so I will merely have to say… well written and thank you Mr Woldenberg for saying what so many are thinking.
Thanks YOU!!! Check out my blog for some pictures showing what little girls might look like with these labels. I don’t even make children’s items but I am against what the CPSIA is imposing. Good Luck.
Congress seems to have abandoned small businesses and home craft artisans of children’s items when CPSC’s Stay of Enforcement went into effect. Any momentum to change and reform CPSIA was lost by the wayside as soon as the immediacy and pressure was off. Impossible testing requirements and even more impossible labeling requirements that will become a reality this coming August are so prohibitively expensive that we all will be out of business – while the major importers and large toy companies – who can afford to comply with the testing and labeling requirements – will be the only ones left and will continue with business as usual.
If I make a doll that sells for $10 I cannot have it tested and labeled at a cost of thousands of dollars and that is just one doll. Plus testing is a destructive process so my one of a kind doll will not exist after testing.
The Bills to change CPSIA – one in the House and one in the Senate are stalled in committee. The proposed appointees of the President to the CPSC including a new chairman have indicated an intent to enforce CPSIA as written. Continued letters to Washington go unanswered or if answered are replied to with a stock reply that in no way reflects any understanding of the concerns expressed in the constituent’s letter. There seems to be nothing left to hope for. Surely this is not the government our Founders intended.
Mr. Woldenberg, I would first like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation for all of your efforts in fighting the CPSIA. You are one of the few who can wade through the intricacies of the law and communicate them effectively.
As an at-home microbusiness, this law is devastating. I am doing all I can to be compliant, but my products are the same (and as safe) as ever. That our elected officials could have passed such an ill-thought-out law is still baffling to me. Worse, while the detrimental effects of the Act continue to grow, no one (legislator or consumers group) has shown any appreciable benefit; only the rhetoric of saving children. To focus on intent rather than assuring the workability and practicality of their actions is, in my mind, irresponsible. To then lay blame for the legislation’s shortcomings on the Commissioner, shameful.
Again, thank you for the steady drum beat.
Thank you Rick for all your hard work in trying to lead our current blind congress. Maybe if they cant see that the CPSIA needs reform then maybe they cant see a RE-ELECTION to office. Seems elected officals forget who put them in office can also remove them in the future.
Thank you Sir, for stirring up the dust…it seems like few people are discussing this…it is too easily being swept under the rug.
Keep writing, keep talking…eventually, some one will listen (I hope).
Thanks for the well spoken comments on the CPSIA. The “one-size-fits-all” approach to this regulation is misguided at best. We need to protect small businesses who have done nothing but produce safe alternatives to the mega-company model of toy production.
Not only does CPSIA remove one more potential source of income from the market (one would need to be independently wealthy to try to enter much of the handmade items market now, to afford labelling/testing costs, since anything that could even potentially “appeal to children” is under CPSIA), but now charity such as giving coats to children is effectively prohibited as well.
The people who are getting hurt the most with this are poor. Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. are removing children’s items from shelves so that they will not be liable under CPSIA. What is a parent supposed to do if they cannot afford the (soon to be more expensive due to testing costs and new labelling laws, no doubt) new coat or toy for their child? The kid is supposed to be cold and have no toys? This law didn’t make things better for anyone, it tore a source of income away from many people who needed it and is making things needlessly more expensive for people who already couldn’t afford many things… not a good thing in this economy. Congress should definitely hand it back to CPSC, they obviously had the situation under as much control as possible (over 99% safe judging by what you said) even before the CPSIA.
what happened to our freedom where we can make things for out children, what if your low income and can’t afford to purchase the store clothing this is not fair we live in the united states of America and should be able to use are freedoms we earned stop taking them away from us.
Thank you for your well-written commentary. This law is so harmful to so many, from the cottage industries that have always used safe materials to the children who won’t have those creative and imaginative toys to play with anymore.
I don’t create things for children, but as a parent this affects me just as much. It is taking away really good choices and leaving me in the hands of the big manufacturers which can afford to comply with the law (and which in each case have been the source of the problems in the past).
It’s like having a leaky faucet in someone’s kitchen and having the city dig up the entire water system, replace the city pipes, charge the citizens to pay for the overhaul, and then wonder why there’s still a leaky faucet and nobody can afford to pay their water bill.
Thank you Rick for putting up the good fight.
Between costly testing requirements and impossible labeling requirements I will have to shut down my cottage industry before I ever had a chance to get started. We are a group that is not being listened to. Seems to me if Congress would just listen, then a solution could be worked out. Most of my suppliers have been more than willing to supply me with the certificates to show the raw materials I use in my products are safe. For small manufacturers this is where a change in the law could make a difference, along with more reasonable labeling.
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
This affects all of us so much, but there are similar laws killing every part of our economy. We don’t seem to see what doesn’t hit us directly.
The point of the Constitution was to stop laws like this from being written. We need to support those who want to keep ALL the laws in line with the Constitution. Some of the bad laws will hit us directly, some will hit others, but ALL of them hit some citizen.
None of us deserve this kind of abuse at the hands of a despotic government.
Thank you for saying this. I am a crafter with a websie and do craft shows. I don’t know how I will be able to afford to have everything tested. I do not understand how a package of onesies snaps is tested safe for lead ,then I open that package to put ribbon on them, and then I need to have that same onesie snap tested for lead. It is not logical. I just don’t understand. In my state there is not any testing facility, that means the $ amount will be ever increasing for what we have tested.
Thank you for fighting for us.