Posts tagged as:

CPSIA

CPSIA and the needle arts

by Walter Olson on January 29, 2010

Overlooked from a couple of months back:

The National NeedleArts Association (TNNA) recently sent a letter to members about how the U.S. Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of October 2009 directly affects how the needlework and crafts industries sell their goods, particularly to children. LuxKnittingBook

“We cannot suddenly say that our products are ‘not for use by children 12 and under’ and still try to teach children to knit, crochet, needlepoint and cross stitch,” states the letter, which was sent by TNNA’s five-member CPSIA committee. “We can’t say children 12 and under are only allowed to use certain tools but not others and still expect them to take needlearts seriously. We must involve ourselves and our businesses in the effort to amend this poorly written, misguided legislation and keep it from destroying our businesses.”

The CPSC has promulgated exemptions for simple textiles and some other materials, which has certainly been better than nothing, but many other innocuous tools and materials used in needle crafting must be either kept off limits to younger crafters or put through onerous testing regimens. [Positive Yarn]

{ 3 comments }

Or actually let’s not, since there’s no indication anyone has been hurt [Washington Post "The Checkup" via AmendTheCPSIA, more; earlier]

{ 1 comment }

The full report is here (PDF); the commission’s Democratic and Republican members managed to reach consensus on enough points to allow for a bipartisan report. AnimalsBall1c Deserving of particularly close attention are the supplementary views (also PDF) by Commissioners Nancy Nord and Anne Northup, and Northup appends to her remarks many letters from those whose businesses are being ravaged needlessly by the law. The same two commissioners also blog on the subject.

As Nord observes, the full CPSC report:

* acknowledges that the agency needs additional flexibility to implement the lead provisions of the CPSIA, though it does not address how that flexibility should be crafted (since we could not reach agreement on that point);
* acknowledges that books probably were not intended to be regulated under the CPSIA and suggests that Congress may want to consider addressing this issue;
* recommends that the retroactive nature of the law be repealed as the lead limits move from 300ppm to 100ppm; and
* outlines the efforts the agency has made to date to assist small manufacturers and artisans in complying with the CPSIA and states our willingness to work with Congress to address the problems small manufacturers continue to face.

The Handmade Toy Alliance has published some reactions from Rob Wilson as well as its own recommended changes to the law, as has Rick Woldenberg.

Alas, the commission was not exactly a model of transparency in its deliberations: its majority turned down requests from Commissioners Nord and Northup for it to open its debate to the public.

P.S. And more from Rick Woldenberg, Commissioner Anne Northup, and Carter Wood/ShopFloor.

{ 1 comment }

John Stossel on CPSIA

by Walter Olson on January 15, 2010

In his show last night on “Crony Capitalism”, with CPSC Commissioner Anne Northup as a guest, he told how Mattel and Hasbro are fine with the law that is wiping out many of their smaller competitors. Other segments of the show can be watched here.

{ 5 comments }

Kids’ used winter coats would have come in handy right about now: as part of his “CPSIA Casualty of the Week” series, Rick Woldenberg profiles Kids’ Closet of Rochester, Illinois, whose owner describes the law’s “devastating” effects on her shop. More on CPSIA and resale here.

{ 4 comments }

“Barred from using lead in children’s jewelry because of its toxicity, some Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium in sparkling charm bracelets and shiny pendants being sold throughout the United States, an Associated Press investigation shows.” [AP/PhysOrg.com]

{ 3 comments }

Former Congresswoman Anne Northup, now a commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, AnimalsBall5chad an op-ed in the Journal last week on the continuing damage being wrought by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). Related: Rick Woldenberg (”Big Toy may be prospering right now, but the little guy is getting killed”). And Karen Raugust at Publisher’s Weekly has a year-end status report on the unpleasant effects of the law on various segments of the kids’ book business, including retailers, “book-plus” and novelty book makers, and one of the most seriously endangered groups, sellers of vintage children’s books.

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Elise Bake, Der Ball Der Tiere (”The Animals’ Ball”, German, 1891), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

CPSIA has come at a steep price for the Northwest Denver Toy Library, which has had to throw out nearly 400 of the 500 toys in its stock because it has no way of being sure that they comply with the 2008 federal law. [9News.com Denver]

{ 5 comments }

In what one hopes is a break from the “no legislative fix needed” united front put forward by the law’s advocates, Consumer Product Safety Commission chair Inez Tenenbaum has acknowledged in a letter to Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif) that at least some legislative action establishing exceptions to the law’s sweeping bans might be helpful. Product Safety Letter has the story. Relatedly:

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Elise Bake, Der Ball Der Tiere (”The Animals’ Ball”, German, 1891), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

Rick Woldenberg talks back to the California attorney general, and also raises some questions about Proposition 65 and the finances of the freelance enforcers in the case, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH). Two years ago we covered CEH’s crusade against the iPhone. More: Darleen Click/Protein Wisdom and a followup from Woldenberg.

Rick Woldenberg casts a skeptical eye on the Toy Safety Certification Program (TSCP), a voluntary toy-safety program promoted by both the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Toy Industries Association that in some respects goes beyond even the requirements of the CPSIA. His contention: “the TSCP significantly favors mass market companies in an almost shameless way.”

{ 2 comments }

The toy shelf gets barer. [Daddy Types] Related: Handmade Toy Alliance, Dan Marshall, Rick Woldenberg, Common Room.

{ 1 comment }

CPSIA’s ban on brass

by Walter Olson on November 7, 2009

By a 3-2 vote, the CPSC has confirmed that the absurd and inflexible Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act bans the sale of children’s products which contain components of conventional (leaded) brass. The vote drew dissents from commissioners Anne Northup (statement) and Nancy Nord (official comments, PDF; further statement at her blog). From the latter:

…The Commission has now very clearly determined that we do not have the flexibility under the law to make common sense decisions with respect to lead.
AnimalsBall3b
…I am especially concerned about what this decision means for our schools, where brass is found on desk hinges, coat hooks, locker pulls and many other items. Are schools now going to be forced to remove all brass and if so, who will bear this financial burden?

…brass is found throughout a home and removing it from toys does little in terms of removing it from a child’s environment. If brass were really harmful to children, we would be taking action to remove it from the home but no one is suggesting that there is a safety issue that needs to be addressed in this way.

Evidence of actual health risks from brass in the everyday environments of American children is, of course, anything but compelling. Rick Woldenberg has been covering the story here, here, here, and here. Greco Woodcrafting predicts rough times ahead for school bands, as well. And the WSJ editorializes today.
AnimalsBall3c
More: this summer the CPSC issued guidance on the closely related topic of ballpoint pens (the roller balls of which include lead alloy); the upshot was so long as manufacturers don’t primarily market any given pen design as being for kids, they’re in the clear, even if large numbers of children are among the pens’ users. (Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association petition and response, both PDF; earlier here, here, etc.) For more on that episode, see 3 Green Angels, NAM “Shop Floor” and more, Rick Woldenberg and more, and Whimsical Walney.

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Elise Bake, Der Ball Der Tiere (”The Animals’ Ball”, German, 1891), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

{ 14 comments }

A nice way to support a family, but it’s sure too bad about CPSIA. And a Columbus, Ohio stay-at-home mom trained as an artist is afraid the law’s testing costs will sink her small-batch online business making bibs, burp clothes, blankets and similar baby items. [Business First of Columbus]

P.S. Be warned: the Grand Haven, Mich. report contains an error regarding the law’s coverage of secondhand stores (h/t reader Panthan in comments).

{ 4 comments }

[Bumped Monday a.m. for readers who missed it over the weekend]

The piece appears in the business section of Saturday’s Times, and it’s a perfectly good one as far as it goes. It starts off with a wooden toy maker in Ogunquit, Maine, who estimates that it would cost him $30,000 to secure testing for the 80 items he makes, using such materials as maple, walnut oil and local beeswax. It touches on the strains between large and small manufacturers, nytimesas well as the thrift-store and vintage-book angles. Overall, it’s really not a bad piece of its sort.

Aside from its timing, that is. The Times has now gotten around to covering some of the harm done by this law ten months after the Washington Post and other media had begun reporting the basic outlines of the story; nine and a half months after a furor had built to national proportions, prompting both members of Congress and the CPSC to hurry out supposed clarifications; nine months after hundreds of bloggers were on the case, the law’s effects on thrift stores were making headlines from coast to coast, and the Times’s continuing failure to report on the law’s effects had commentators noting its “weird blind spot” on the issue; eight and a half months after a deeply clueless Times editorial assailed critics of the law who The Times wakes up“foment needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises like libraries, resale shops and handmade toy businesses”; seven and a half months after protests by minibike dealers began drawing wide national coverage; seven months after critics rallied on Capitol Hill, and the Washington Post joined in reporting on the law’s dire effects on vintage (pre-1985) kids’ books; and so on to the present.

Okay, so the Times was — well, not a day late and a dollar short, but more like 300 days late and many billions of dollars in overlooked costs short. Still, let’s be grateful: the paper’s news side has now implicitly rebuked the editorial side’s fantastic, ideologically blinkered dismissal of “needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises”. And the Times’s belated acknowledgment of the story can serve as permission for other sectors of the media dependent on Times coverage — including some magazines and network news departments — to acknowledge at last the legitimacy of the story and begin according serious attention to the continuing CPSIA calamity. When they do, they will find much to catch up on. (& welcome Handmade Toy Alliance, Chris Fountain readers)

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE from Ethel Everett, illustrator, Nursery Rhymes (1900), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

{ 13 comments }

Don Boudreaux has some thoughts on that. [Cafe Hayek]

And per this L.A. Times account, business — at least business with an organized Washington, D.C. presence — is on board, just as it was when CPSIA passed. So what could go wrong?

{ 2 comments }

More background reading on the Draconian consumer product safety law:

  • Fear of losing even more high-quality German toy suppliers [Kathy + Matt Take Milwaukee]
  • Mattel will pay $13 million to 20 plaintiff’s firms TheTown2to resolve class action over toy recalls; claimed value of settlement to class (vouchers, etc.) is something like $37 million [National Law Journal, Coughlin Stoia release; earlier] Note also Rick Woldenberg’s March analysis of one recall (recall of 436,000 units premised on two cans of bad paint).
  • New law “has added several new tasks [to the CPSC], many of which most charitably can be described as marginal in the overall pursuit of product safety that will divert staff and financial resources from more important safety issues.” [attorney Michael Brown, quoted at Handmade Toy Alliance Blog]
  • Alarmist reporting on Boston’s WBZ affords a glimpse of MaryHadLamb2“the scary people behind the law” [Woldenberg]
  • Effort to help move blogger Kevin Drum up the CPSIA learning curve [Coyote]
  • “The “Resale Round-up,” launched by the CPSC, finally limits the power of these merchants of death who recklessly barter second-hand toys to unsuspecting civilians at low prices…. The only question now is how did any of us survive this long?” [David Harsanyi, Denver Post]
  • Among its other effects, the statute “will boost opportunities for mass-tort suits” [Crain's Chicago Business]
  • Law’s “continuing disaster for small business” illustrates MaryHadLamb3difference between crony capitalism and the real kind [James DeLong, The American, with kind words for a certain "indispensable" website that's covered the law]

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES from Ethel Everett, illustrator, Nursery Rhymes (1900), courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

{ 1 comment }