CPSIA – Washington Times Clubs the CPSIA and Congress Over Brass Decision

Brass attacks
Consumer ‘safety’ law strikes bad notes

Seventy-six trombones left the big charade. A thousand and 10 store debts are close at hand. There are zippers, keys – so many amenities – all outlawed because Congress is blind. With apologies to Meredith Willson’s 1957 Broadway show “The Music Man,” such could be the latest fallout from the draconian Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

Congress passed the misnamed CPSIA in 2008 to protect consumers, especially children, from all manner of supposed dangers in ordinary products. The CPSIA’s most stringently targeted danger is lead, which clearly can be a health hazard. The problem is that the CPSIA leaves all reason behind, setting allowable lead limits so low, with so little room for common-sense exceptions, that it effectively bans huge numbers of harmless products used in everyday life.

A veritable smorgasbord of business groups and grass-roots activists have arisen to fight the CPSIA – among them an outfit called the Alliance for Children’s Product Safety. Its Web site, Amend the CPSIA, used the “76 Trombones” motif to complain about the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s latest ruling concerning the CPSIA, which effectively outlaws all brass used in children’s products. (One component of brass is lead.) By a 3-2 vote on Nov. 4, the commission decided that Congress had left no leeway for common-sense exceptions to the brass ban.

Result? To quote at some length from the alliance’s Web site, “In addition to brass zippers, grommets and other apparel and footwear components, victims of this decision include brass instruments, musical bells and certain strings used in a string instrument. By in effect outlawing brass in children’s products as defined by CPSIA, … the CPSC’s actions call into question the future of school bands. Will young musicians in their school band’s brass section now have to hum along with their peers, or switch to the recorder or a (plastic) kazoo?

“The fact is that brass is routinely used in countless products used and touched by children daily, including door knobs, locker handles, and much, much more. There is no danger of lead poisoning from brass. CPSC staff wrote that they consider brass bushings safe. … However, staff believed that CPSIA offers no flexibility to the CPSC to assess risk.”

Commissioners Nancy Nord (former chairman of the commission) and Anne Northup (former congressman from Kentucky) dissented from the hard-line anti-brass vote. Wrote Ms. Nord: “This does not advance consumer safety, diverts staff resources from real safety issues, and puts an unnecessary burden on manufacturers and sellers of children’s products.” Ms. Northup chimed in that “unless [Congress] act* soon, more small businesses will be forced to shut down.”

Ms. Northup is right to put the onus on Congress, which passed a truly counterproductive law. For well over a year now, Congress has been flooded with specific and reasonable complaints about multiple aspects of the CPSIA. These consequences include the destruction of children’s books published before 1985, the silencing of charitable auctions and the shuttering of thrift shops nationwide.

Yet the congressional leadership has turned a blind eye to all the evidence that its handiwork is awful. Neither congressional committee with jurisdiction over the law has held a single hearing featuring a single critic of the CPSIA.

With more than 10 percent of the American work force officially unemployed, Congress should be jumping through brass hoops to fix any laws, such as CPSIA, that hobble the economy. But when it comes to putting practicality over rigid ideology, it seems Congress’ top brass can’t be bothered.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Washington Times Clubs the CPSIA and Congress Over Brass Decision

Barbara Beck’s Letter to WSJ

Barbara Beck wrote a letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal. The letter can be found by clicking here.

Manufacturers Urge Change in Product Safety Law

The Journal of Commerce covers the amend the CPSIA rally in this article.

Countdown to the Rally – Today is April 1st!

It is now past 1 am on the East Coast and our Rally is less than 9 hours away!

Hopefully by now you are regularly following the constant developments and new content on our web site.  You should know, by the way, that the site was only created two weeks ago by just a few, hard-working volunteers.  Unbelievable!  So, please do your part and forward our web address www.AmendTheCPSIA.com to as many friends as possible.  Explain them, in your own words, why our action is important to you, to them and to our country.

You do not have to be in DC to be part of the action! 

Whether you are surfing, blogging or twitting you can help a great deal by encouraging people to connect to the site and contribute their thoughts, stories, comments and ideas.  We have no editors, no political agenda except to get your story out in the open for everyone to hear.   It is clear that too many people are either still clueless, in a state of information overload due to the broader economic crisis, or simply in denial of the real impact of the CPSIA. 

One of the most important aspect of our Rally is that everything we are doing is totally transparent and for all to see.  We certainly welcome and encourage all points of views to be shared, debated and added to the mass of data that we are putting together for everybody to see.  In the end, we believe that people will make up their mind based on the facts and that more information certainly cannot hurt. 

In a few hours, a number of business leaders from many parts of the Children Product industries, from relevant scientific fields (lead and phthalates) and from our political leadership will take a leadership stance and engage in a constructive bi-partisan dialogue to fix the CPSIA.  Yes, we can have safe children products without destroying an entire section of our economy.  They will share with all the real facts and stories of the many people they represent.  These are sad stories of people, companies, families being unnecessarily and dramatically affected by the ‘lightspeed’ implementation of the CPSIA.  

Our coalition will call for Congress to impose a one-year comprehensive stay of implementation of the CPSIA in order to fix the obvious flaws in this law.  This is a reasonable amount of time to have proper congressional oversights hearings, provide businesses of all sizes an opportunity to transition to the new regulations and to allow adequate time for the CPSC to issue guidance and rules. 

You will be able to see it live on our website, to follow the blogs and tweeter messages.  But do not stop there!  Please add your comments, your testimony, your personal story.  Your families, your customers and mostly the children that you serve need you to take that step.

Today, the political madness will stop and our grassroot movement of hard-working, law-abiding, mission-driven community leaders is changing the dynamic of this wasteful drama once and for all. 

Please join us and bring others along.

Etienne