My business has been impacted on many levels by the current and future requirements of CPSIA. Here's a summary of what we are dealing with here at CLC:
Self published and self produced products:
With these items, we have now been granted the opportunity to sell these for another year. Barring modifications to the law between now and February 2010, the issues with these have just been postponed:
The Alphabet Fun book I have written and self-published is clearly for young children, as are more than a dozen different Lapbook Kits we've written. Those will all become illegal under this new law, just not
until 2010 now. Those books and lapbook kits represent hours and hours of work on our part – and are each unique educational items that will cease to exist because of the widespread nature of this law. (There
is no way we would be able to afford to test them and certify them as the law is going to require.) Fortunately, with the stay we have a year to sell off our current inventory of those items, and to come up with other ways to package/market some of these products.
Additionally, we have been carrying science kits created by a former science teacher. She has introduced many, many students to the exciting aspects of science – and she will no longer be able to make
and sell any of those, again, effective February 2010, since they are geared towards younger students, and would require extensive/expensive testing. (And even right now, they are probably risky to sell,
because the lead content in them is unknown -- we actually sold off our stock of these by February 2009 and will not be restocking them.)
Handmade/Fabric Items:
My niece is a stay-at-home mom of three. She sews Baby Slings for her own use, and for others to use. They are beautiful and practical. I have never seen slings like these available in any of the “big box”
stores. And these too, will soon become products of the past. (Another item that has never hurt anyone has joined the list of “banned substances” because the testing requirements of this new law are so far-reaching.)
Our used books and other materials:
These were not helped by the one year testing stay, and had to be pulled with less than 1 month's notice.
Because of my research, I felt confident that used books would still be safe to sell after February 9th. (All my initial research said that “regular books” do not contain lead. Imagine my surprise when the CPSC issued an 11th hour ruling that said we could not sell children's books printed before 1986, unless of course we wanted to test them.) However, in our six years in business, we have allowed our customers to consign many educational items besides books. All of those had to be removed from the shelves before February 10th, and
unless this law is changed, I don’t see any of them coming back on our shelves. (I called the CPSC hotline earlier that week and asked them how I was supposed to know whether items besides books had lead –
items such as CDs, DVD’s, game pieces, puzzles, manipulatives, etc. His answer – test them…So while I’m not required by the law to test the items I am reselling, this law states that I am responsible for knowing whether they have lead before I sell them, and the only way to tell that is to test them…
In the last 4 months we have had to turn away boxes and boxes of used materials that there is no reason to believe are unsafe -- but we can't afford the risk to put them on our shelves, not with fines of up to $100,000 and jail times up to 5 years, even if we unintentionally violate this law...
For a small business, these new requirements have been devastating. And there is no proof that even one child has been made safer by these changes.
Catherine Jaime
Creative Learning Connection
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After fighting CPSIA and posting on it for over 2 months now, I have figured out (finally, I know!) that a webpage is a difficult way to write/read an ongoing set of writings...For those of you who stay up on these things better than I do, it probably comes as no surpise that I decided what I really needed to do was set up a blog. And my apologies to do of you like me who were quite content when electronic communication was all done through emails! Oh, the "good old days"...In less than 6 months I've joined facebook, twitter, and now the blogging world. And most of those came out of fighting CPSIA! So, I will leave this page up as long as the information on it is still current, but most (possibly all) future information on CPSIA will be posted at: http://clcandcpsia.blogspot.com/
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A website is up now where you can find answers to many of your questions about CPSIA: www.whatistheCPSIA.com and another site highlights the fact that CPSIA hurts kids, it doesn't help them: http://www.cpsiahurtskids.com/
If you want to keep up with the slowly (but finally) growing number of articles on the topic, and see what some of us are continuing to do to fight this, the above site is a great place to go. Several of us are posting our ongoing work there, as well as links to the various articles we find, etc.
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The Wall Street Journal contiues to give some coverage to CPSIA. A story last night on-line dealt with it reasonably well.
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The HandmadeToy Alliance has developed a straightforward Myth versus Fact Sheet for CPSIA.
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I've decided that writing stories often helps me get my thoughts straight. In the past I've written several travel stories about trips we've taken along the Lewis and Clark trail, to Panama, Washington, D.C., and to Florida. Most of those stories were "told" by stuffed animals that we brought along. This past weekend, in order to help us cope with all the fun we're having with CPSIA, I started writing that story. It is told by Liberty Eagle. Later, just for fun, we'll add pictures and actually print it. But for now, for anyone who's interested, here's the story of our first couple of days of dealing with CPSIA. I'll post more as it gets written.
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"Here are phone numbers of the Senators on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. They are reviewing the CPSIA reform bill (s.374) that Senator DeMint introduced. Another bill which is very similar was introduced by Robert Bennett in is in the same committee, so they have two bills on the same issue. Please call ALL of these senators and encourage them to pass this bill with regards to component testing on lead AND phthalates. Call them even it you do not live in the state they represent.
John D. Rockafellar 202-224-6472
Kay Hutchinson 202-224-5922
Mark Begich 202-224-3004
Barbara Boxer 202-224-3553
Samuel Brownback 202-224-6521
Maria Cantwell 202-224-3441
Jim DeMint 202-224-6121 (the author of the bill, if he needs a call, it would just be to thank him for writing this!)
Bryon Dorgan 202-224-2551
John Ensign 202-224-6244
Daniel Inouye 202-224-3934
John Isakson 202-224-3643
Mike Johanns 202-224-4224
John Kerry 202-224-2742
Amy Klobuchar 202-224-3244
Frank Lautenberg 202-224-3224
Mel Martinez 202-224-3041
Claire McCaskill 202-224-6154
Bill Nelson 202-224-5274
Mark Pryor 202-224-2353
Olympia Snowe 202-224-5344
John Thune 202-224-2321
Tom Udall 202-224-5941
David Vitter 202-224-4623
Mark Warner 202-224-2023
Roger Wicker 202-224-6253
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We've started a Facebook for Creative Learning Connection. It is still a work in progress, but one of the first things we did was start a discussion thread on CPSIA. I have posted two letters there -- one I wrote yesterday to the editors of a couple of newspapers, and one that I sent in response to an "encouraging email" I received. Both of those show my continued frustration with all of this, and an example of the impact the law is having.
Here's an op-ed I also wrote recently that shows a good overview of the law, and our concerns about it:
“First do no harm”. This motto of health professionals should be a requirement for our elected legislative officials. Instead, it seems that their motto is “good ideas make good laws”. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008 is a great example of that not working.
On February 10th, the economic world stood still – and very few people noticed. It was not the economic tidal wave that had been predicted earlier in the year – but the waves were felt across the country, and will continue to be felt into the future.
Activist groups such as Consumer Union and Citizen Watch applaud the law, and are working hard to keep any changes from being made to it. They mock the naysayers as being ignorant and misinformed, and accuse small business people of overreacting to this law.
For those who have missed the outrage on either side over CPSIA (which would be most of us), let me explain it briefly:
The background: In 2007 large quantities of lead laden toys were imported from Asia. At least one child died as a result, and thousands of toys had to be recalled. The accidental death of a child is always a tragedy; unsafe toys on the shelves of retail businesses are never good.
The response: From these unfortunate incidents came a wide-sweeping bill. Because it was presented in the name of “protecting children”, little attention was paid by our elected officials to the overzealous nature of the law brought before them. Our congressmen and senators, almost without fail, voted for the bill. (Only one congressman voted against the final version, and just three senators.) And on August 14, 2008, President Bush signed it in to law. Some aspects of the law went into effect immediately, others were slated to go into effect six months later, on February 10, 2009, and still more a year later, in August, 2009.
With the above facts, it is not a stretch of the imagination to believe that many of us who are being affected by the law have spent more time studying it and debating it than did our elected officials who enacted it. Most of us who are being affected by it had not even heard about it until a month or so before the February 10th deadline. But since then we have become immersed in it: Reading the 60+ page bill itself (which we can safely guess most of our Representatives did not do); and pouring over the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) website: reading their responses to the FAQs, viewing the hearings they had with the fabric and apparel industry and the book publishers, and much more.
A summary of the law: In short, all children’s products (defined as products intended for children 12 and under) must meet newer, stiffer lead limits and phthalates limits (an element used in making some plastics more pliable). AND all said products will eventually need to be tested and certified to meet those limits (more on that later).
The problems: It sounds good to say that we want children’s products to be safe. But let’s look at how wide sweeping this piece of legislation is:
1) Children up through age 12 are included – an upper age of 5 or 6 would have been more in line with the problems that had occurred, and the purported intent of the law, and made the implementation of it much less drastic.
2) “All children’s products” are being included – which sounds like a good idea until you look at what “all” includes.
3) For example, books are included in “all”. “Regular books”, which could easily be defined as those without play value, have never been recalled, and never been a health risk. Yet they are currently included in this law.
4) Children’s clothing and other fabric items are being included, even though these have been seldom included in recall issues. (And where there has been an issue – it has generally been unacceptable lead levels introduced through silk screening or fasteners – coming in from Asia.)
5) And there is no distinction in the law to mass produced items that end up on “big box” store shelves (and again, where the problem initially came from) and items that are being hand-crafted or self-published on a small scale (neither of which caused the problems “being addressed” by this legislation).
6) And resellers are being required to abide by these restrictions – not just those who are retailing new items.
Why are any of the above problems? Let’s review the most important ways:
1) Let’s start with resellers. Again, it sounds good to say that we want all unsafe products removed from store shelves. But what does this become to resellers? The CPSC has been talking out of both sides of its mouth in this regards. They issued a “clarification” that resellers are not expected to test the products that come into their stores. However, and this is the big problem, they cannot sell things that are banned by this law – that would include the thousands of things already recalled, and the countless more that will become illegal under the new lead and phthalates limits, but that are already in circulation. When the CPSC was asked how resellers could possibly know if something had too much lead – the answer was simple: “Test it”.
2) And the list of items that have been recalled is massive. I spent an hour looking over the CPSC’s data base of over 4,000 recalled items, and cannot even imagine having to go through that every time a used “children’s product” came into my store. Resellers who are paying attention to these two requirements may well decide it is easier to stop carrying children’s products than to worry about the risks of inadvertently violating the law. (I know at least one reseller who is cutting out all risky children’s items as a result of this.) Has anyone thought through the practical implications of this for families who rely on the second-hand market to make their budgets work? And how many items will end up in landfills now that really didn’t need to?
3) Once the next stage goes into effect – it will become practically impossible for hand crafters, and self-publishers, who produce “children’s products” to continue, because they will have the same testing and certification requirements of the “big guys”. This is not economically feasible for most of these small businesses, and most of them will have to stop producing those items when this portion of the law is enforced. Fortunately, the deadline for the certification and testing requirements has been moved out another 12 months, but it still remains out there on the horizon in the not so distant future.
4) Many perfectly safe children’s items (such as books and most clothing items) that remain in the market will go up in price in the near future because of the testing and certification requirements that are being applied across the board to all children’s products. Again, it’s not that all of these requirements are unreasonable, but what is unreasonable is that they are being applied to an entire market, instead of just the areas that would make sense (such as children’s toys).
As parents, we want our children to be safe. But we do not expect the government to do our job. We are capable of making sure that their toys are safe and that they don’t eat their books. We don’t need a “Nanny Government” to do our jobs for us.
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I got more bad news on CPSIA -- we can't even GIVE AWAY things we find that are non-complaint. And our Senator's offfice confirmed what I was understanding -- that we cannot safely sell ANYTHING used for children under 12 except books that were printed after 1985. Please understand that when we start taking consignments again.
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For any who had their doubts, this piece of legislation is putting people out of business across this country. If you or anyone you know is not understanding the fullness of this law, you can start here. On February 9, just before the law went into effect, the Consumer Product Safety Commission published a 13 page "Guidance for Small Resellers, Crafters and Charities". There wasn't anything new in it -- but it sums up in 13 pages of more or less understandable English what we've been saying all month. This is BAD law and the efffects of it are going to be BAD. Right now, I would say the most effective things you can do are to pray and to contact our Senators and tell them to support Senator DeMintt's amendment. Right now his amendment seems the only likely solution, at least in the near future.
For anyone who is just learning about CPSIA -- you may want to go further down the page for some of our initial information on this law (look for the bold words).
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The CPSC has issued another statement on the CPSIA, this time "Spelling Out the Enforcement Policy for New Lead Limits in Children's Products". It appears, from the best we can determine, that they are telling us that "ordinary children's books", printed after 1985 are now legal to sell -- or at the least that we won't be prosecuted for selling them. Not sure which. And not sure whether it's intended to be a permanent exemption of ordinary books from the requirements....Oh, the joy of government rhetoric! So with that last minute (after close of business the Friday before the law went into effect) announcement, we went from thinking that all of our books were okay, to realizing that many were not.
For anyone who thinks we're overreacting to all this, here's a link to the National Association of Resellers and Thrift Shop's recent statement on CPSIA.
The National Association of Manufacturers was hoping for a reasonable fix to this mess before February 10, but time ran out. Here's a link to one of their recent statements on CPSIA.
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This week's good news is that Senator DeMint of South Carolina is proposing a new law, that would replace the CPSIA. He is trying to get it to the Senate Floor currently. Unfortunately, even if it passes there, it is unlikely that it will be through the House and to the President by February 10. But we will keep you posted on that as we know anything. His law is not a perfect solution to this mess, but it is much better than the current one! So feel free to read about it, and then to encourage your Senators and Representives to vote for it.
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We got a bit of good news on January 30 -- the CPSC postponed the requirements for testing and certifying new children's products for at least 12 months. So instead of rushing to get things tested and certified by February 10, 2009, we have until February 10, 2010. This is a much more reasonable deadline for manufacturers to meet, and a much more reasonable one for retailers like us who have inventory on hand that predates the law.
The other good news this past week was HSLDA getting involved. They sent a letter to their members a few days ago requesting information from homeschooling businesses that will be effected by this law. HSLDA had a meeting on Wednesday, February 4, with the CPSC to discuss the effects of this law on small businesses such as ours. (This is still work in progress for them as well as us.)
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I woke up this morning thinking about CPSIA again. (Surprise, I know.) And the idea that I was struck with was, how often do we think: "There ought to be a law." We should be careful when we think those thoughts, because this is what we get -- Congress trying to legisate common sense and parenting. No, in this case, there shouldn't be a law!
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If you have not heard about this craziness coming out of Congress, here are some articles to get you started:
There was a great opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on January 14: "Pelosi's Toy Story".
And another at Forbes.com on January 16: Scrap the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.
For information on a lawsuit that may be filed to help put an end to this craziness, see www.reformCPSIA.org
Here are links to two groups who are following the books part of this law. At the moment, things do not look good!
http://www.graphicartsonline.com/article/CA6628038.html
http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=1322 (Even the libraries could be effected by this.)
I'm continuing to research this. I found an article written in a Montana newspaper that does a great job summing up why this is important, and the impact it can have on all of us -- not just those of us in businesses that may be impacted directly. It has links to some other sites with good information too:
http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/legislating_montana_small_businesses_out_of_business/7197/ (It can also be found by googling “Legislating Montana Small Businesses Out of Business”)
And here's another good link to check out on this: http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/265066
Prayers are requested for our federal government and all of us who will be affected by this disastrous legislation! (Which would include all of you who enjoy good bargains in children's clothes and children's books!)
Dee and I hand delivered letters on January 16 with our concerns to the local offices of Senators Sessions and Shelby and Congressman Griffith. Parker Griffith was not in office when this law was passed, but his office said that they would get back to us with answers sometime late next week. Both Senators have legislative assistants in D.C. working on the issue and they are supposed to get back to us by late next week as well. We'll keep you posted with any new developments. (We still haven't heard anything back from Senator Shelby or Congressman Griffith; and we weren't happy with the responses we got from Senator Sessions' office. The bottom line there is that he still thinks this is a good law. )
If you live outside Northern Alabama you can check the senate and house websites to get the contact information for your congressmen and women: www.senate.gov and www.house.gov
You can also send emails, though my understanding is that phone calls are the best, then faxes, and then emails.
I've typed up a sample fax, that would work for both Alabama senators. Feel free to use it as is, or to edit it as you see fit.
For those of us in Northern Alabama, here are the numbers:
Contact you Senators and Congressman about CPSIA Legislation that goes into effect on February 10th.
www.senate.gov
Senator Jeff Sessions (who voted FOR this legislation)
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Phone Number
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Fax Number
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Washington DC
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202-224-4124
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202-224-3149
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Montgomery
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334-244-7017
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334-244-7091
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Mobile
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251-414-3083
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251-414-5845
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Birmingham
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205-731-1500
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205-731-0221
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Huntsville
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256-533-0979
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256-533-0745
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Senator Richard Shelby (who voted FOR this legislation)
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Phone Number
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Fax Number
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Washington DC
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202-224-5744
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202-224-3416
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Montgomery
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334-731-1384
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334-223-7317
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Mobile
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251- 694-4164
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251-694-4166
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Tuscaloosa
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205-759-5047
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205-759-5067
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Birmingham
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205-731-1384
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205-731-1386
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Huntsville
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256-772-0460
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256-772-8387
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www.house.gov
Congressman Parker Griffith (remember that he was not in office yet when this passed)
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Phone Number
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Fax Number
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Washington DC
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202-225-4801
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202-225-4392
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Huntsville
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256-551-0190
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256-551-0194
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You can also find their email addresses and snail mail addresses at the appropriate website. (I’ve read that emailing is the least effective way to get our message across to them right now, because email is easy to ignore.)
If you send them a fax, be sure to include your home address. That is the way they generally contact you in response.
We are making our fax machine available to anyone who would like to write up a fax on this issue. (No charge.)
