Efforts to Clarify Children's Product Safety Law Continue

On Thursday, January 15, in an effort to help clarify how the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) affects booksellers, the American Booksellers Association sent an e-mail to more than 20 children's publishers to ascertain what they will be doing to comply with CPSIA. As publisher responses are received, ABA will share the information with members via Bookselling This Week.

The Children's Book Council sent a legislative update to its members this week that explained: "The exact extent to which children's books are included [in CPSIA] is still not yet entirely clear, despite the looming deadline designated in the Act that its stipulations must be enacted by February 10, 2009. We are in contact with both the AAP [Association of American Publishers] and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and will bring you information as we have it available."

The CBC communication highlighted several clarifications issued by Cheryl Falvey, general counsel at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The CBC Legislative Update noted:

• The regulations do not apply to titles that are not designated primarily for use by children 12 and under. This quasi-clarification should be interpreted conservatively by publishers of young adult books until further clarification is provided.

• Under the current interpretation of the Act, a book intended or designed primarily for children would need to meet the new lead content limit established by the CPSIA. However, according to Falvey, the Commission does intend to exempt certain products from the regulations. She writes, "generally speaking in order to determine that a product can never exceed the lead limits of the CPSIA the Commission must be presented with reliable and replicable test results establishing that the total lead content of the commodity or class of materials cannot exceed the lead limits."

• AAP provided CPSC with testing information on a long list of children's titles (the results can be found at www.rrd.com/wwwCPSIA/home.asp. However, the Commission's current stance is that these tests do not provide enough information on the total lead content of children's books.

• The ban on phthalates only applies to products that are designated primarily as toys. Therefore, only books that have inherent "play" value -- such as vinyl books intended for use in the bath -- would be restricted under the Act. Books sold with accompanying toys would not need testing, though the toy itself would.

CBC urged publishers to contact their legislators now in regards to CPSIA to "make it clear that paper-based children's books pose no health threat to children."

A clarification of the law issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission on January 8 said:

"The new law requires that domestic manufacturers and importers certify that children's products made after February 10 meet all the new safety standards and the lead ban. Sellers of used children's products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard, or new toy standards.

"The new safety law does not require resellers to test children's products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children's products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties."

The CPSC clarification also stressed that it intended to focus its enforcement efforts on those products that pose the greatest risk and largest exposure. "While CPSC expects every company to comply fully with the new laws, resellers should pay special attention to certain product categories. Among these are recalled children's products, particularly cribs and play yards; children's products that may contain lead, such as children's jewelry and painted wooden or metal toys; flimsily made toys that are easily breakable into small parts; toys that lack the required age warnings; and dolls and stuffed toys that have buttons, eyes, noses, or other small parts that are not securely fastened and could present a choking hazard for young children." --David Grogan