A little back story.
(from the CPSC website)
CPSC Overview
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard or can injure children. The CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters, and household chemicals - contributed significantly to the 30 percent decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 30 years.
So ... these are the people that make sure that you don't get asbestos toothpaste and chromium teddy bears.
So congress got this law passed last year that said that manufacturers who were putting lead into children's toys (which includes bicycles and helmets) needed to stop. Well, no, that would be crazy. What it really says is that these bosses need to reduce the amount of lead they were putting in their products that they were selling to kids to 600 parts per million.
But what is all the fuss, what did a little lead ever do to a kid?
(from The Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning www.leadsafe.org)
About Lead Poisoning
Lead poisoning is the number one environmental hazard threatening children throughout the United States, affecting an estimated 310,000 children under the age of six. Children under 6 and pregnant women are at the greatest risk for lead poisoning because lead inhibits the proper physical and cognitive development of in children and infants. Even low levels of lead poisoning can cause hyperactivity, aggressive behavior, learning disabilities, lowered IQ, speech delay and hearing impairment. High levels of lead can cause severe mental disabilities, convulsions, coma or even death.
Lead poisoning is completely preventable, yet hundreds of children in Maryland are diagnosed with elevated levels of lead in their blood each year and thousands of children go untested. Because of lead's effect upon a child's brain, thousands of Maryland children fail to reach their full potential and hundreds of communities are prevented from the benefits of the child’s long-term productivity. Studies have shown children who are lead poisoned are more likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system and that lead poisoned children are seven times more likely to drop out of school before graduating. Because of lost wages and the burden on taxpayers caused by anti-social behaviors and increased special education needs, it is estimated that that general public loses millions of dollars each year.
Lead poisoning causes irreversible damage to the brain and nervous system as well as the heart and red blood cells resulting in:
- Learning disabilities
- Lowered I.Q.
- Hyperactivity
- Attention Deficit Disorder
- Speech Delay
- Hearing Loss
- Slowed or reduced growth
- Behavioral Problems
- Violent or Aggressive Behavior
High Level Poisoning can result in: Serve Cognitive Disabilities, Coma and Death.
The harmful effects of lead poisoning are permanent. The ONLY cure is prevention.
Oh .... I guess that is what lead poisoning does.
So this is the story from the Bicycle Retailer and Industry News ... With snippy interjections by yours truely.
CPSC Delays Testing Deadline |
|
BETHESDA, MD (BRAIN)—The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Friday pushed back the testing deadline for lead content in children’s products, spurring a collective sigh of relief from manufacturers in the bicycle and other industries.
*Collective sigh of relief on part of manufacturers spurs collective groan from those not making profit poisoning kids*
The requirement for third-party testing and certification to verify children’s products are meeting a strict new lead limit was scheduled to go into effect on Feb. 10 as part of the Consumer Product Safety Information Act, but will now kick in one year from that date at the earliest.
Manufacturers are still required to meet the new lead limit of 600 parts per million, but won’t have to pay for costly third party testing, an expense that posed a threat to smaller companies.
*costly third party testing = effective third party testing*
Bob Burns, head of the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association’s legislative committee and Trek’s legal counsel, praised the Commission’s decision.
*I guess the great Trek bicycle making corporation was one of those "smaller companies" threatened by the prospect of not poisoning kids*
“We view this move by the CPSC as a very positive sign,” Burns said. “They were handed a poorly-thought-out-knee-jerk-reaction law by Congress and they were given no additional funds to administer that law. The CPSC’s decision to delay the testing requirements shows that they are a practical federal agency that knows how to balance the need to protect consumers with the realities of the world.”
*"Realities of the world" should be read in this instance as a substitute for the words corporate profit.*
The Commission voted 2-0 to delay enforcement of the certification and testing requirements based on “substantial confusion” among manufacturers about the law.
*Nice ... a 2-0 vote by the commission overturns the intention of a law passed by congress ... democracy inaction*
“The Commission has received literally thousands of e-mail, telephone and written inquires as to how to comply, when to comply, what is required in support of the various certifications, what form the required certifications must take and who must issue them,” according an announcement written by Lowell F. Martin, an attorney for the Commission.
The BPSA filed a petition last week asking the Commission to exempt lead contained in steel, aluminum and copper alloys from the law because small bike parts like valve stems and spoke nipples made of those metals exceed the lead limit. That petition is pending.
*The BPSA is the corporate lobby group, the Bicycle Product Supplier Association*
For the latest on the CPSIA read the March 1 issue of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News.
—Nicole Formosa
So, congradulations BPSA, Trek, and all of you other guys who value profit over the wellbeing of our children and society as a whole. You have won the day.
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