I've been reading with increasing concern about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act which becomes law on 10th February 2009 - 52 days away, and which will affect me and countless other small American businesses who produce toys, clothing and other accessories which are used or could be used by children under 12. From the outset, I should say that I started my business because I was fed up with the many cheap, plasticky craft kits in the mainstream stores, with components of questionable origin. I decided to do something about the situation by making my own kits with components which I carefully source from US suppliers. My criteria are simple - I want to make things which I would give to my own children.
This is an overview of the situation, taken from The Handmade Toy Alliance:
In 2007, large toy manufacturers who outsource their production to China and other developing countries violated the public's trust. They were selling toys with dangerously high lead content, toys with unsafe small part, toys with improperly secured and easily swallowed small magnets, and toys made from chemicals that made kids sick. Almost every problem toy in 2007 was made in China.
The United States Congress rightly recognized that the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) lacked the authority and staffing to prevent dangerous toys from being imported into the US. So, they passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) in August, 2008. Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.
All of these changes will be fairly easy for large, multinational toy manufacturers to comply with. Large manufacturers who make thousands of units of each toy have very little incremental cost to pay for testing and update their molds to include batch labels.
For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers and manufacturers of children's products, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.
- A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
- A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes cloth diapers to sell online must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
- A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
- And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.
The CPSIA simply forgot to exclude the class of children's goods that have earned and kept the public's trust: Toys, clothes, and accessories made in the US, Canada, and Europe. The result, unless the law is modified, is that handmade children's products will no longer be legal in the US.
If this law had been applied to the food industry, every farmers market in the country would be forced to close while Kraft and Dole prospered.
The Nature's Child blog lists some good points, including these:
- this law mandates unnecessary testing of materials, that by their very nature, are at no risk of contamination by lead and phthalates: specifically unadorned fabrics, sewing thread, paperunfinished wood, and wood finished with food-grade finishes (such as beeswax).
- this law is not compatible with international safety standards, such as the EU's EN71, that already impose even stricter limits that the new US standard on harmful chemicals in childrens' products. As a result, manufacturers of the world's safest toys would have to spend millions of dollars on redundant testing in order to continue selling their products in this country. *some European manufacturers are already pulling out of the US market because of the prohibitive costs of testing, for example Selecta Spielzeug and Haba wood jewelry.
- as it stands, this part of the law will put thousands of small manufacturers out of business - hurting our economy and causing even more loan defaults.
- making the law retroactive would put millions of small independent children's stores out of business, as large portions of their inventory are defined as "banned hazardous substances" overnight - regardless of whether these products contain dangerous materials.
- requiring testing of finished products makes it impossible to legally sell handmade products for children. This removes consumer choice as well as devastating businesses that specialize in handmade items.
The Handmade Toy Alliance has some good proposals to improve the CPSIA.
The Smart Mama has a great overview of the whole situation as well as useful links.
There's a button in my sidebar with links to more resources and information.
Here's an expedited way to contact your state representatives.
Please take the time to make your voice heard. We all value our children's safety but this law needs to be re-considered. And time is short.
