CPSIA – Did Anyone Think to Test the Lemonade for Lead???

Am I the last person in America to hear about the seven-year-old girl in Oregon whose lemonade stand was shut down by County health officials for not obtaining her $120 food handler’s license?

After I got done laughing at the contemptible stupidity of the national trend of obsessive rule following (I’m not done laughing, actually), this certainly brought to mind the awful CPSIA and its potential to inflict this kind of mindless regulatory “enforcement” . . . AGAINST YOU AND ME.

That subject is no joke, I am afraid. As I have been repeating endlessly, the current testing frequency rule that the CPSC recently published without a blush will force our company to spend $15 million a year on testing, including the destruction of 81,000 units of our products (54 units per test times 1500 products). That’s not over my lifetime but in the course of ONE YEAR. And our fearless CPSC leader seemingly can’t WAIT to enforce these rules against bad people like me. Chairman Tenenbaum has tirelessly promised to refocus her agency on enforcement in the coming year. She wants to shut somebody down to prove how tough she is.

If you think this lemonade example is something that would “never” happen at the hands of our responsible federal government, well, you and I disagree. Let’s consider the legal basis for lead-in-paint recalls. Heaven knows the CPSC has imposed many of those during Ms. Tenenbaum’s tenure. As you may remember from prior posts, the derivation of recall authority comes from the FHSA which restricts the authority to “imminent hazards”. Section 12(a) of the FHSA provides this definition: “As used in this section, and hereinafter in this Act, the term ‘imminently hazardous consumer product’ means a consumer product which presents imminent and unreasonable risk of death, serious illness, or severe personal injury.”

Strangely, today’s CPSC policy on lead-in-paint is one of strict liability. This means that EITHER the agency has reached the legal conclusion that any amount of lead-in-paint constitutes an imminent and unreasonable risk of death, serious illness or severe personal injury, which is tacitly impossible, or the agency has decided to just IGNORE THE LAW. No one’s asking these questions publicly, but that’s the nub of it. This interpretation allows them to demand a recall for a dot of paint in the center of the pupil of the eye of a doll, something they have certainly done, and assert that they have protected you from something dangerous.

Nice but it’s not within their legal authority to make up fairy tales to sell to the press.

So the CPSC is already dinging other companies in the children’s product industry for inconsequential “offenses” that are arugably OUTSIDE its authority. The exercise of judgment, at least on lead-in-paint, is now against agency policy.

Who will be the next lemonade stand shut down? Don’t assume it will just employ seven-year-olds. The proprietor might look a lot like you . . . .

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CPSIA – Did Anyone Think to Test the Lemonade for Lead???

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.

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