GUEST BLOG – Congressional Office of Compliance Confirms: Congress is Dangerous to Your Health

Okay conspiracy theorists. Do you think the Capitol Hill newspaper Politico held this story until Rick was out of town? In a front page story today “Dangers on the Hill” Politico reported that Congress’ Office of Compliance have found an estimated 6,300 safety hazards that are “potentially fatal or could leave victims with serious injuries.”

That’s right, Congress is dangerous to your health.

Here are some of the juiciest excerpts from the story. In Rick’s honor, we provide commentary after each excerpt, Woldenberg style:

“Workplace safety experts say that if Congress were a private-sector business, it would be at risk for massive fines from government regulators.” (oh, the irony!)

“But Congress has exempted itself from key parts of federal workplace law.” (Without even proving it was impracticatable for Mr. Waxman to comply?)

“…the latest study offers arresting detail. Investigators estimate there are 1,742 electrical hazards, 1,058 fire-safety hazards, 102 storage shelving issues, 61 first-aid emergency-care lapses and 70 machine-guarding problems, to name a few found so far.” (Hey, no lead violations?)


The report divides the hazards into categories, with some more routine and others potentially life threatening. (Wait a minute, that sounds like risk assessment!)

“Furthermore, the report makes clear that the hazards may prove dangerous to Capitol Hill visitors, including constituents and lobbyists.” (in other words, visiting Congress is hazardous to….people)

“This measure was inspired by that year’s new Republican majority and some Democrats who were aggrieved by what they saw as supreme hypocrisy: Congress and regulatory agencies imposed all manner of rules on the private sector and the states through laws such as the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act, but lawmakers themselves did not have to obey those rules.” (Can anyone think of another law that they could have included – hint –it rhymes with SHEE SHPEE SHESH SHI SHAY)

The compliance office cannot issue investigative subpoenas to Congress and its entities, even to seek information that could solve a workplace hazard. (Call in the AGs!)

Whistleblower protections for staffers who report hazards are essentially nonexistent, leaving aides responsible for their own litigation costs if they are fired or an office retaliates against them. (C’mon, the Onion couldn’t write a better article – oh the hypocrisy!)

“It’s hard to defend Congress when things are this bad,” said Center for Progressive Reform board member Sidney Shapiro, … But if Congress is going to insist on running its own safety regime, then it ought to do it the right way.” (Are we sure they’re not talking about CPSIA?)

“Congress faces a major challenge in trying to fund fire- and life-safety projects, historical preservation and deferred maintenance campuswide, all within very limited resources,” said a congressional aide familiar with the blue-ribbon panel. (Hey, they told us safety at any cost – even if the costs don’t improve safety)

“On the upside, a number of offices have become more proactive about protecting safety by voluntarily requesting inspections ahead of the compliance office’s regular schedule; 154 offices in the 111th Congress achieved hazard-free status. “Over the years, we’ve found that working cooperatively with employing offices to reduce hazardous conditions in the Capitol complex can be more effective than a confrontational approach. The statistics bear this out by showing remarkable progress in reducing hazards.” [Working cooperatively? What a novel idea! Nah, we say use the CPSIA model – enforce, enforce, enforce, treat every risk equally, discourage cooperation and levy huge fines!]

We couldn’t make this stuff up. To read the entire article for yourself, click here. (warning it’s about 1800 words).

Posted by the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety Staff

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GUEST BLOG – Congressional Office of Compliance Confirms: Congress is Dangerous to Your Health

CPSIA – USA Today Highlights Damage Inflicted by CSPIA

Lead testing can be costly for mom and pop toy shops

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CPSIA – USA Today Highlights Damage Inflicted by CSPIA

CPSIA – Casualty of the Week for June 1

The Alliance for Children’s Product Safety’s “CPSIA Casualty of the Week” highlights how the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is disrupting the U.S. marketplace in order to draw attention to the problems faced by small businesses, public institutions, consumers and others trying to comply with senseless and often contradictory provisions of the law. These provisions do nothing to improve product safety, but are driving small businesses out of the market.

Congress and the CPSC need to address the problems with CPSIA implementation to help small businesses by restoring “common sense” to our nation’s product safety laws.

CPSIA Casualty of the Week for June 1, 2010:

CPSIA RULES! (THOUSANDS OF PAGES OF THEM)

Educational Products Market Overwhelmed by CPSIA-Mandated Testing and Paperwork

American Educational Products LLC (AMEP) is a Fort Collins, Colorado-based company selling classroom teaching aids like flash cards, animal models, globes and relief maps that educators rely on to teach their students. Despite a sterling safety record, AMEP President Michael Warring is worried that the ever-increasing amount of time that his company is spending on compliance with the CPSIA threatens the future of his company.

Warring explained, “We sold 5,600 different SKU’s in 2009 to 2,600 different customers. Approximately 2,000 of these SKUs might be considered ‘children’s products’, meaning that they must be tested by a third party for lead. My 64 employees and I are finding it virtually impossible to manage the scale of this CPSIA-mandated testing. Each SKU takes approximately eight hours a year in compliance and testing administration. This means that 24 of my 64 employees would need to work full-time, year-round just to ensure compliance with CPSIA – even though our supply chain controls effectively manage the risk of lead violations. I cannot afford a 37% increase in employees nor can I force 40 employees to do the work of 64. Neither alternative can be achieved.”

Warring also said his company has lost business due to CPSIA.

“One customer cancelled a $5,000 custom rock order after deciding that rocks were too ‘dangerous’ for a geology lesson because of the CPSIA lead rules and elected to use posters instead,” said Warring. “What caliber of young scientists are we nurturing in our country when we won’t let students touch and feel the textures, densities and hues of naturally-occurring rocks in a classroom? After all, kids pick up rocks outside the classroom every day. Our laws are scaring schools away from common sense choices about how our kids are educated.”

He continued, “Another customer insisted that we use XRF scanning for lead-in-paint, a procedure not approved by the CPSC for compliance testing because XRF tests may produce erroneous results. We showed him independent test results that confirmed that our products were well within the CPSIA lead limits, but our inability to provide XRF testing resulted in the customer canceling orders worth about $35,000 to our company. Confusion reigns supreme – two years after passage of the CPSIA”

Warring fears that the CPSIA’s senseless testing requirements and voluminous paperwork will mean that many of the 5,600 educational products that AMEP produces will disappear from the marketplace.

“As we offer fewer choices to the distributors we serve, our position as a vendor will deteriorate and our very viability in the marketplace could be at risk,” said Warring.

Warring concluded, “I’m not sure how children’s safety and well being is being addressed when their parents’ livelihoods disappear and when their education is being limited to material in printed form. These are two of the many real consequences, intended or otherwise, that CPSIA has imposed on my company, my employees, the vendors we support, our customers, and the children we help to educate.”

For additional information on the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety and CPSIA, and to view previous “Casualties of the Week, visit http://www.AmendTheCPSIA.com.

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CPSIA – Casualty of the Week for June 1

CPSIA – CPSIA Casualty of the Week January 7

The Alliance for Children’s Product Safety’s “CPSIA Casualty of the Week” highlights how the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is disrupting the U.S. marketplace in order to draw attention to the problems faced by small businesses, public institutions, consumers and others trying to comply with senseless and often contradictory provisions of the law. These provisions do nothing to improve product safety, but are driving small businesses out of the market.

Congress and the CPSC need to address the problems with CPSIA implementation to help small businesses by restoring “common sense” to our nation’s product safety laws.

CPSIA Casualty of the Week for January 11, 2010

NEW SAFETY LAW CLEANING OUT “THE KIDS CLOSET”

Kitty Boyce worked for 18 years to build her resale shop, The Kids Closet, located in Rochester, IL, into a well-known resale shop. With its colorful signage, brightly decorated interior and whimsical whale logo, The Kids Closet built its reputation on offering customers quality second-hand children’s products at great values.

Shortly after being voted the “Number One Place to Shop Resale” by the Illinois Times, Kitty announced that because of CPSIA she was converting her store to sell predominately teen and adult clothing, home accessories and furniture, and changing its name to Remarkable Resale. The loss of revenue in her shop due to the changes in inventory forced her to lay off several employees.

“CPSIA has been devastating for us,” said Kitty. “We just decided to get rid of all the toys and furniture. It’s just not worth the risk.”

While the Consumer Product Safety Commission has temporarily stayed requirements for testing and certifying products, all resale shops still must comply with the new lead and phthalate standards. Realistically, resale shops cannot be 100 percent certain that the used items meet the new requirements.

Due to the over-reaching law, Kitty Boyce’s dedicated attempts to provide children and families with reasonably priced, gently used baby equipment, furniture and toys have been shut down. For Kitty and others, the risk of enforcement action by state attorneys general or private groups is too great. The result is that during one of the worst economies in decades, resale shops around the country are avoiding selling winter clothing for kids and other children’s products.

This winter, ask Congress how denying a perfectly safe used winter coat to a child whose parents can’t afford to buy a new one is protecting that child’s health.

For more information about Kitty Boyce, visit http://www.thekidscloset.net/closet.htm

For additional information on the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety and CPSIA, and to view previous “Casualties of the Week, visit http://www.AmendTheCPSIA.com/.

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CPSIA – CPSIA Casualty of the Week January 7

CPSIA – Letter to CPSC re Tracking Labels Guidance 9-18-09

September 18, 2009 VIA FEDERAL EXPRESS Todd Stevenson Director, Office of the Secretary U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission 4330 East West Highway Bethesda, MD 20814 Re: Section 103 Tracking Labels Guidance Dear Mr. Stevenson: I am writing on behalf of the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety, an organization comprised of small businesses in many industries impacted by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). I request your prompt consideration of an urgent matter regarding the impact of Section 103 tracking labels guidance issued on July 21 (the “Guidance”) on small businesses in America. By way of background, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that I have expended considerable effort to help the agency avoid mishap in the implementation of the CPSIA’s troubling tracking labels provision in recent months. I have testified before the CPSC on tracking labels (May 12 hearing, second panel), wrote a comment letter on Section 103 , sent a letter to Rep. John Dingell in part addressing tracking labels and posted no less than 38 blog entries related to tracking labels, including a comprehensive list of “unanswered questions” about the Guidance. To date, none of my “unanswered questions” have been addressed by the agency in any form as far as I know. The Guidance was originally heralded as a document sensitive to the interests of small businesses. Some terms seemed to offer relief to small lot manufacturers who did not already mark products with lot information. This regulatory approach was forecast by Commissioner Moore in his May 13 statement explaining his vote on the NAM tracking labels stay petition, when he noted that tracking labels implementation would be “a learning process for all of us and not an excuse to punish an unwitting mistake.” Unfortunately, the Guidance also specified that all of the information in Section 103 needed to be “ascertainable” by both the manufacturer and consumers. This has been interpreted to mean that manufacturers must be able to produce “detailed production information, including the means to distinguish products made from different factories, made with different components, at different times” for any product pulled from any store shelf anywhere and at any time. The Commission made it clear that this is a serious legal obligation. As Mr. Moore wrote on July 20, “those who fail to keep the information required by the tracking label provision . . . will not find a very sympathetic ear at the Commission.” The issue of what “ascertainable” means gets to the heart of the issue that Mr. Moore highlighted. It is also at the heart of the tracking labels dilemma for small businesses. In my “unanswered questions” blogpost on August 14, I posed the following question: The Guidance states: “The question of what should be ascertainable is a different question than whether that specific information can be marked on the product or packaging.” [Emphasis added.] Thus, it appears that the CPSC will not permit ANY manufacturers to sell ANY children’s product for which the specified Section 103 information is not “ascertainable”. In other words, if a consumer calls up to inquire about the Section 103 information for any unit of a children’s product made on or after August 14, regardless of whether made by a small lot manufacturer, that information must be available – or less. Correct? Elsewhere in the Guidance, the CPSC advises that small lot manufacturers need not create a lot marking system if one does not currently exist. So, essentially, the rules require that co-hort information be “ascertainable” on items without lot markings. This is, for all practical purposes, impossible. An unmarked item is fungible with all other similar unmarked items. If small businesses are not required to mark by lot, then it will be impossible to distinguish products by lot. This is a massive problem for small businesses. It is not solvable as far as I can tell. The Guidance says on one hand that we do not need to mark by lot, and on the other hand, says we will be exposed to civil and criminal penalties if we cannot “ascertain” lot information. This is faulty “guidance” at a minimum. It is tantamount to requiring universal marking of products by lot – although the Guidance states the exact opposite. Please do not overlook the fact that Section 103 applies to every children’s product sold in this country without exception. It is a common misconception in the market that tracking labels are only required for items subject to the new lead limits or the phthalates ban. Thus, the scale of affected industries and product classes is incomprehensibly large. As I have testified and written extensively on the issues relating to tracking labels for businesses catering to low volume specialty markets, I will not highlight again the many reasons why this rule is impractical in the extreme. Please consider, however, a very practical business problem. Many specialty items are low-priced and have not been designed optimally for tracking labels. The Guidance recognized the seriousness of this issue for the bulk vending industry, but overlooked it for everyone else. Frankly, the practical issues for items that sell for $0.25 are virtually identical for items that sell for $10. In any event, “ascertaining” co-hort information on any children’s product without a lot marking is basically impossible (without changing every lot in some physical way, a manufacturing “solution” likely to quickly degrade into utter chaos or commercial disaster). It is therefore likely that most products sold into specialty markets will violate the Guidance unless they incorporate permanent lot markings. Members of the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety are facing a profound disaster as a consequence of this rule. Products are already being dropped for an inability to meet the “ascertainable” rule, particularly under threat of penalties under the CPSIA. No one working for a children’s product manufacturer will risk going to jail over co-hort information; they are much more likely to drop products to avoid the issue entirely. The economic damage will be deep and wide – and will contribute nothing to consumer safety. It is ironic that declining product availability as a result of implementation of Section 103 may lead to fewer recalls, thus giving the misimpression that children are safer. In fact, children will simply go to poorly-stocked schools and enjoy a lower standard of living. I call on the Commission to review and modify the Guidance to provide real and meaningful relief from the requirement on “ascertainability” for small businesses catering to specialty markets. Your prompt attention to this urgent issue will save jobs, products and industries. Thank you for your prompt consideration of this important matter. Sincerely, Richard Woldenberg Chairman Alliance for Children’s Product Safety cc: Chairman Inez Tenenbaum Commissioner Robert Adler Commissioner Thomas Moore Commissioner Nancy Nord Commissioner Anne Northrup

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CPSIA – Letter to CPSC re Tracking Labels Guidance 9-18-09