The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 designed to make children's products safer by mandating extensive product testing is starting to take effect. Apparently, boutique stores and small producers in the USA are going out of business because this law requires every material used in a children's product to be tested for lead along with a battery of other tests.
For China, its less of a problem because of the large volume of products being made means testing charges are not that big and can be passed on to the customers in some cases.
For example, the cost to test our chalk products will be around US$ 2,0000. That's a big deal if you make 300 pcs per year, but less so if you make 300,000 pcs per year.
Now for the stupidity of this law. This law is very stringent and the lawyers must be pretty smug that they have increased penalties and are forcing factories to test their products for even more stuff than before.
Unfortunately, they have kept the same system of compliance as before, which is you test your product once, and then show the certificate when you ship your orders to "prove" you are compliant. So, any unscrupulous company simply makes one sample with safe materials that will pass the testing, and then uses the certificate to ship container after container of unsafe product.
Oh, but maybe the government in the US will be randomly testing stuff on the store shelves! Yes, and those small factories in China who were doing the lead painting don't worry about that because they will have been paid already and will simply abscond if they are caught. I am not even sure if they really will do more random testing in the retail stores - it wasn't included in the law I read (HR 4040)
I suspect all of the big toy companies are now testing the products BEFORE shipment is made (like they should have been doing on a random basis before the whole crisis.) I suspect they started doing that within one week of the first problems with lead on toys, though probably only on materials that can actually have lead in them.
The government of course simply mandates that EVERYTHING has to be tested...organic cotton? Test it for lead! Injection molded plastic? Test it for lead? Zippers? Test them too! Lead? Test it for lead!
And test it for phalathates! Which are plastic softeners but if you really want to comply you will test your metal parts for plastic softeners.
I can understand the politicians' predicament though - voters/consumers screaming for action means a hurried up law must be passed. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am not against testing, regulation, etc., I just wish it could have been implemented better. I would prefer more on the actual enforcement side with perhaps less mandatory testing of every component. The government is already backing down in this manner by excluding some products from testing - like products made from raw wood, etc.
Bonus link: This law also will sponsor a study as follows:
Because we all know that minority children play with their toys in very different manners than white kids.
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