Lead Content Remains Issue for CPSIA Compliance
Three years after being made into law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act continues to wrangle with lead.
The law, which went into effect in 2008 and implemented strict requirements and staggered deadlines for new lead and phthalate bans in children’s products, has shifted and stalled as lawmakers struggle to reconcile the stringent bans with the concerns of manufacturers and technological roadblocks regarding lead testing. The latest shift is an extension in the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s stay of enforcement for testing and certification of lead content in children’s products until Dec. 31, 2011. The ruling excludes metal components of children’s jewelry.
Under the CPSIA, manufacturers are responsible for submitting all children’s products to third-party testing to certify that the lead content in their products does not exceed Consumer Product Safety Commission standards.
Manufacturers and industry groups have argued that the cost of these tests, the limited number of accredited laboratories approved by the CPSC to carry out the tests, the scope of materials and components that must be tested (which, manufacturers argue, often don’t pose a health threat), and the CPSC’s vague direction on testing and certification requirements make the law ineffective and an unfair burden on the makers and importers of children’s products.
In a letter to the CPSC, industry groups wrote that the CPSC’s lack of clarity on the CPSIA’s requirements has left manufacturers and importers unsure of how to best comply with the law. “Despite this market chaos, the delay in implementing the testing and certification requirements has not apparently adversely affected children’s product safety as recalls fell to historically low levels since passage of the CPSIA,” the letter said. “The impact on market participants has been more serious, however. Small businesses remain at a real disadvantage, being unable to harness scale to reduce their costs and lacking the resources to fully absorb and implement all the complex new rules and regulations.”
“It is bad enough that the CPSIA has added to manufacturers’ costs, but in some cases, it makes no sense,” said Ilse Metchek, president of the California Fashion Association. “No one ever died from a sequin. If you ate a truckload of sequins, the worst that would happen is you’d get a stomachache. But under the CPSIA, because they ding the meter, they’re banned. It is an example of how the CPSIA makes no differentiation between that which is silly and that which is legitimate.”
Now—under pressure from groups such as the American Apparel & Footwear Association, Retail Industry Leaders Association, California Fashion Association and the National Association of Manufacturers— the CPSC has voted 4–1 to extend its stay of enforcement for testing and certification of lead content until the end of the year. Despite the vote, compliance with the federal restrictions for lead content is still required.
The stay buys lawmakers time to clarify the language of the law and allows importers and manufacturers to document proof of compliance and ensure their supply chains are prepared to incorporate the CPSIA’s rules.
The stay of enforcement is the third stay of compliance for the lead-testing requirements, which should have gone into effect in February 2009, pointed out Commissioner Robert S. Adler after the vote.
Still, lead remains a hot topic.
On Aug. 14, the CPSIA’s lead-content limit is scheduled to drop to 100 parts-permillion— a level that the CPSC has yet to establish is technologically feasible for children’s products to meet.
“Many commenters have provided input on difficulties associated with meeting the expected 100 [parts-per-million] lead limit with some products while others have asked the commission to develop and publicly disseminate guidance on statistical-uncertainty bands associated with test results to assure that safe products that fail the limit by a small margin can continue to be sold,” a petition from industry groups to the CPSC said. “In addition, a reduction in lead limits will worsen problems currently associated with inter-laboratory variability in test results, including those from third party–accredited labs.”
The CPSC has held hearings into the feasibility of testing for the 100-parts-permillion limit but has yet to issue a ruling on the matter.
In the meantime, industry groups continue to grapple with the CPSIA. The AAFA will host a product safety and chemicalmanagement seminar on May 25 at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles. The seminar will provide a CPSIA regulatory update.
For more information, visit www.apparelandfootwear.org.
