Waxman Sends Letter to CSPC calling for changes

[Former_Member]

http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1474&Itemid=1

Follow this link and read the letter dated today 1/16.

If that link does not work it is the third item down on the homepage=
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

[TheFairiesNest]

oh my gosh that looks like what we've been wanting!!

[chatnoirstudios]

but they're still not promoting the exemption of dyed fabrics etc....unless I misread the letter....

[Former_Member]

Yes, the wording of this letter expresses all of our exact concerns and questions. I couldn't have written it better myself. Hopefully we'll finally get some clarity on this law!

[woolies]

I didn't see anything about handmade items - or did I miss it in the legal-ese?

[softandscrubby]

#2 on page 3 mentiones dyed and undyed fabric, but they were talking about apparel.

Great letter from some important people. It's on the right track and will most likely be read in it's entirety.

[Former_Member]

Holy crap that is the best thing I have read all year!!!!!

[TheFurkidStudio]

This is really terrific news.

Please call Congressman Rush and Representative Waxman and thank them for sending this much-needed letter to the Commission. Let them know we appreciate it and show them how many of us are waiting for answers!

Congressman Bobby Rush:
202-225-4372

Representative Henry Waxman:
202-225-3976

[Former_Member]

This is great!! They are on the right track and finally someone is listening to us. More time and thought were put into this letter than any I have previously seen. I'll do a happy dance when they exclude acrylic yarn from testing. Crossing my fingers.

[Former_Member]

They rats always leave a sinking ship and this one is on it's way down

[Former_Member]

Sorry to be the debby-downer, but let me get this straight....
Rush, Waxman, etc. wrote this law without thinking about its effect on people like us, the cost of compliance or how it would be regulated. Now, those very politicians that wrote this thing and just threw it in the CPSC's lap to enforce and regulate are now telling the CPSC to get their act together, figure the law out and fix the mess they created by not doing their homework in the first place?!?!?! These guys should have thought of this crap BEFORE trying to make it a law and THEN going back to try to fix what they screwed up!
It's a shame that it had to take so many phone calls, letters, forums, etc. to get these people to see common sense. I only hope this will actually lead to some positive changes to save a lot of us from closing our doors....

[Former_Member]

There are some wonderful letters from Senators posted on the Fashion-Incubator site also. One is from my Senator, Carl Levin. I'm so proud to be a Michigander right now!

[Former_Member]

Do you have the link? I can't find the letters....

[Former_Member]

Forgive me for being a kill-joy, but to me that letter basically said, "we handed you a giant pile of crap and now we'd like you to clean up our mess quicker, please". All this could have been prevented, if Congress had not rushed through the passing of this law in the first place. Now that they've handed off the debacle to the CPSC, they expect them to make a masterpiece out of their "sewage". (forgive my crass-ness)

That said, I am extremely grateful, that it does sound like many of our specific concerns are being adressed. I am particularly happy with Waxman's urging the CPSC to exempt "ordinary" children's books.

I still see 2 glaring problems with the letter though:
1) How many children's apparel items can be created without the use of any "plastic, painted, or metal" components? What about snaps, zippers and buttons? Looks like there may be a surge in natural wooden buttons in the coming months. People will start marketing their children's clothes with the slogan "paint your own buttons!"

2)It is not merely "guidance" and "education" that small business need in conforming with this new law. I think we all understand it pretty well and have decided we can't afford to comply. What would help out a WHOLE lot, is if the COST of testing was regulated in such a way that small businesses could afford it. Say $20 per item MAX(or set up a sliding scale based on the previous year's business income. It doesn't matter how many times you explain to me that I MUST get my items tested, point out where the nearest testing facility is and tell me it's going to cost $1000 to do so. I STILL won't be able to afford it, no matter how much "education" you ram down my throat.

Nope, I'm not letting him off the hook yet. Looks like it's time to contact good 'ol Mr. Waxman, yet again.

[Former_Member]

Amen, artistscs28. I just posted the same basic idea at fashion-incubator. We keep blaming the CPSC and they are doing their fair share to frustrate the devil out of us, but they really were handed sewage with this law and will not be able to make anything out of it except more sewage.
I'm trying to be positive and this really is better than nothing, but they really should have thought of this BEFORE it got to this point!

[Former_Member]

it's about @##$&%*%((%( time they spoke up! I hate that it states that we're "misinformed" and that it's the CPSC's job to figure it out. they wrote this FBOS! but it's something...at least they are acknowledging that there's a problem.

thanks for posting!

[Former_Member]

I want off this roller coaster!!! I just finished making some CPSIA cookies tested for lead and phthalates...good to go!

[Former_Member]

turtleparktots, please share the cookies!! my daughter really like extra phthalate chunks sprinkled with chopped lead!! lol!

[Former_Member]

well I tested the cookies BEFORE baking...lead and phthalates probably developed in the oven :-)

[Former_Member]

Turtle, did you use XRF or digestive testing? I need to make sure you are using a reasonable testing program. *grin*

[Former_Member]

I am so happy I want to cry right now!!!! Hopefully everything will work out!!!!!! There is hope!!!!!!

[Former_Member]

Now...pass me a lead cookie, please!

[Former_Member]

We still can't let up pressuring them though. That letter, while encouraging, is NOT good enough.

I just emailed THIS to the Chamber of Energy and Commerce (I'm also going to print it out and mail it in):

1/16/09

Dear Mr. Waxman and Mr. Rush
While I appreciate your efforts to push through necessary exemptions from the CPSIA (I am particularly happy with your urging the exemption of “ordinary” children's books), as well as your urging the CPSC to act more quickly in voting on such exemptions and provide more clear guidelines for businesses to follow, I still feel the need to point out 2 very obvious “gaps”, if you will, in your letter to the CPSC dated 1/16/09.

1) How many children's apparel items can be created without the use of any "plastic, painted, or metal" components? What about snaps, zippers and buttons? Realistically, an exemption for fabrics, is not good enough. I know of very few garments (apart from knitted or crocheted ones) that do not require some sort of non-fabric component to hold it together once on a body. Furthermore, exempting fabrics, still does not address the quenching of creativity that will come into affect on Feb 10, 2009, if children's clothing makers, who cannot afford costly testing, are forced to create with fabrics only. Have you been in a fabric store or children's clothing store lately? I guarantee you that consumers will not be satisfied with embellishment-free garments for their children. However, they will have NO problem finding them at places like Walmart, who's vendors can afford to fully comply and pay the testing costs. Looks like small businesses lose again.

2) It is not merely "guidance" and "education" that small business need in conforming with this new law. I think we all understand it pretty well and have decided we can't afford to comply. What would help out a WHOLE lot, is if the COST of testing was regulated in such a way that small businesses could afford it. Say $20 per item MAX (or set up a sliding scale based on the previous year's business income. Also, don't require small business to test their items after every “batch” (since a batch for a SB may be less than 10), but perhaps only once a year (since if you use the same components to make the same item, even if you have to buy “more” of them, chances are they are not going to spontaneously produce lead, after being tested the first time). It doesn't matter how many times you explain to me that I MUST get my items tested, point out where the nearest testing facility is and tell me it's going to cost $1000 to do so. I STILL won't be able to afford it, no matter how much "education" I am provided with.

In all honesty, I believe that while your pressuring the CPSC to act more quickly shows a willingness to help out smaller businesses and avoid economic calamity on Feb 10, 2009, the fact that the CPSC is having such trouble “working through” the law in the first place is because it was written so broadly, that it quite simply could take years for the CPSC to consider every possible exemption necessary. Congress, quite frankly, rushed through the passing of this law without discussion or proper research and then handed the mess to the CPSC.

I am not the only person who thinks this. The CPSIA has now garnered the attention of revered business magazines, such as Forbes (people who KNOW money), and guess what their reccomendation is? Scrap it and start over: http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/16/cpsia-safety-toys-oped-cx_wo_0116olson.html

I apologize if I come across as disrespectful, but there is a time to “fight” and there is a time to admit when something has “failed”. The CPSIA has failed the American people and is a problem that is too big to be solved to everyone's satisfaction (satisfaction = being able to stay in business) before Feb 10, 2009. If you do not want the blame laid at your feet for the massive business failures that will take place, regardless of your urging the CPSC to “hurry”, after Feb 10, 2009, you will do the right thing and recommend to Congress that it be repealed.

Sincerely,

Shalom C. Schultz
www.shalomscottagehome.com

(below you will find the full content of the Forbes Magazine article, dated 1/16/09)
Scrap The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act
Walter Olson, 01.16.09, 04:21 PM EST
Self-congratulation makes for bad law.

If someone you know volunteers at a thrift store or crochets baby hats for the crafts site Etsy or favors handmade wooden toys as a baby shower gift, you've probably been hearing the alarms about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).
Hailed almost universally on its passage last year--it passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter--CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children's items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers. How could this have happened?
Congress passed CPSIA in a frenzy of self-congratulation following last year's overblown panic over Chinese toys with lead paint. Washington's consumer and environmentalist lobbies used the occasion to tack on some other long-sought legislative goals, including a ban on phthalates used to soften plastic.
The law's provisions were billed as stringent, something applauded by high-minded commentators as a way to force the Mattels and Fisher-Prices of the world to keep more careful watch on the supply chains of their Chinese factories.
Barbed with penalties that include felony prison time and fines of $100,000, the law goes into effect in stages; one key deadline is Feb. 10, when it becomes unlawful to ship goods for sale that have not been tested. Eventually, new kids' goods will all have to be subjected to more stringent "third-party" testing, and it will be unlawful to give away untested inventory even for free.
The first thing to note is that we're not just talking about toys here. With few exceptions, the law covers all products intended primarily for children under 12. That includes clothing, fabric and textile goods of all kinds: hats, shoes, diapers, hair bands, sports pennants, Scouting patches, local school-logo gear and so on.
And paper goods: books, flash cards, board games, baseball cards, kits for home schoolers, party supplies and the like. And sporting equipment, outdoor gear, bikes, backpacks and telescopes. And furnishings for kids' rooms.
And videogame cartridges and audio books. And specialized assistive and therapeutic gear used by disabled and autistic kids.
Again with relatively few exceptions, makers of these goods can't rely only on materials known to be unproblematic (natural dyed yarn, local wood) or that come from reputable local suppliers, or even ones that are certified organic.
Instead they must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component. For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching--with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.
Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000--and that's just to test the one style and size. The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests--not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment. The maker of a kids' telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.
Could it get worse? Yes, it could. Contrary to some reports, thrift and secondhand stores are not exempt from the law. Although (unlike creators of new goods) they aren't obliged to test the items they stock, they are exposed to liability and fines if any goods on their shelves (or a component button, bolt, binding, etc.) are found to test above the (very low) thresholds being phased in.
Nor does it get them off the hook to say an older product's noncompliance with the new standards wasn't something they knew or should have known about (let alone to say anyone was harmed; the whole controversy from start to finish has gone on with precious little showing of real-world harm to American kids from most of the goods being banned).
Thrift store managers, often volunteers themselves, have no way to guess whether every grommet or zipper on a kids' jacket or ink on an old jigsaw puzzle box or some plastic component of Mom's old roller skates would pass muster.
"The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill," predicted Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Among the biggest losers if that happens: poorer parents who might start having to buy kids' winter coats new at $30 rather than used at $5 or $10.
And even worse: Since the law does not exempt books, children's' sections at libraries and bookstores will, at minimum, face price hikes on newly acquired titles and, at worse, may have to rethink older holdings.
After all, no one has the slightest idea how many future violations lie hidden in the stacks and few want to play a guessing game about how seriously officialdom will view illegality. "Either they take all the children's books off the shelves," Associate Executive Director Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association told the Boston Phoenix, "or they ban children from the library."
Antique dolls? Old model-car collections? Musical instruments? Vintage bicycles? Some will go underground in private collectors' clubs, others will be tossed on the bonfires of the new Cultural Revolution.
A traditional attraction on the heritage festival circuit is the kids' dance or performance troupe in ethnic, pioneer or frontier garb, often handcrafted with the sort of ornate detail (beads, pendants, lace inserts, etc.) that will not be practical to test.
The same goes for Native American kids' cherished moccasins, buckskins and powwow gear. Making matters worse, many foreign producers of craft and small-batch toys and clothes, chary of liability under the law, are planning to exit the American market entirely, a step already taken by three German toymakers.
In recent weeks, as thousands of crafters and retailers began to compare notes and realize that they would soon be left with stocks of unsalable merchandise, forced out of business or both, the protests have begun to mount: alarm-raising at hundreds of blogs and forums, a torrent of Twitter discussion, YouTube videos, endangered-products lists, Facebook groups and so forth.
A group called Handmade Toy Alliance is calling attention to the law's burdens in that area. Booksellers are mobilizing. Yet prominent consumer groups continue to defend even the law's more extreme applications. "I haven't heard a single legitimate concern yet," Public Citizen's David Arkush wrote last month.
The consumer groups--and the congressional offices of key CPSIA backers Bobby Rush, D-Ill., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif.--have blamed opposition to the law on "misinformation" and "confusion."
Defenders of the law point out, for example, that item-by-item enforcement at thrift shops is unlikely to be an enforcement priority any time soon for the Consumer Product Safety Commission's 100 field investigators.
The thing is, few librarians, eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) sellers or knitters want to be told that they're outlaws but at too small-fry a level to attract the authorities' attention. They want to be legal.
Besides, the law grants enforcement authority not only to the CPSC but to the 50 state attorneys general, which means anyone who ships nationally, small fry or not, is at the mercy of whomever turns out to be the least reasonable attorney general, a post for which there is always considerable competition.
As CPSIA opponents mobilize, the phrase "unintended consequences" is often heard. Part of the irony, after all, is that the Hasbros and Targets, with their standardization and economies of scale, can afford to adapt to such rules as part of their business plan, while the sorts of enterprises that initially looked to benefit most from the Chinese toy scare--local, organic and so forth--are also the ones who find it hardest to comply.
But the failure here runs deeper. This was not some enactment slipped through in the dead of night: It was one of the most highly publicized pieces of legislation to pass Congress last year.
And yet now it appears precious few lawmakers took the time to check what was in the bill, while precious few in the press (which ran countless let's-pass-a-law articles) cared to raise even the most basic questions about what the law was going to require.
Yes, something's being exposed as systematically defective here. But it's not the contents of our kids' toy chests. It's the way we make public policy.

[Former_Member]

aaaaaaaah... here comes that headache again.

i agree about the hypocrisy of handing the CPSC a load of bs, then chastising them for not making turning it into gold.

however, they do bring some valid points regarding failures on the CPSC's part.

i LOVE that bobby rush signed the letter. rather ironic considering his freakishly hard nosed stance- i was beginning to think he was incapable of seeing reason. BUT... isn't it interesting that the major insights were to the benefit of groups with a lot of PR or financial clout?

and i still think they have a ways to go. they need to quit yelling at nord, and assist by making the necessary changes to make this law feasible for implementation and enforcement. STEP 1: MORE TIME. good grief. i don't care if they've had several months with the law in their laps, it's only been in the last month or so that the import of the small business outreach became evident.

they can't possibly do the necessary outreach and expect compliance in the next.. what? 3 weeks?

[Former_Member]

blynkenandnod says: STEP 1: MORE TIME. good grief. i don't care if they've had several months with the law in their laps, it's only been in the last month or so that the import of the small business outreach became evident.

they can't possibly do the necessary outreach and expect compliance in the next.. what? 3 weeks?
--------------------------------------------------------
Yes, at the very LEAST "suspend" the law until the "kinks" can be worked out (if they're too proud to repeal it and start over). You also have to keep in mind that the people working at the CPSC are also REAL people who need their jobs to pay their bills too, and I imagine if they "rush" through it and make an "errors" along the way, their head will be on the chopping block. What an awful job they have right now. They probably all thought they had the most boring jobs in the world...until the CPSIA came along and people started getting pissed.