Leading Consumer Groups Urge Congress To Enact Strong Reforms Before
Recess
The number of recalls of toys and children’s products is up
22% over the first half of last year, despite industry promises last year to
solve the problems that made 2007 the “year of the recall,” according to an
analysis of Consumer Product Safety Commission data by the nation’s leading
consumer groups. The groups urged Congress to complete a “strong CPSC Reform
Act” before the August recess.
In response to the recall of 45 million toys and children’s
products in 2007, the House and the Senate both passed strong CPSC Reform Acts
granting the beleaguered agency new funding and authority to police imports and
banning lead in children’s products. Final action on a conference committee
report resolving differences, however, has been delayed by numerous industry
requests for exceptions to the law, the groups said.
“Will Congress give the toy industry Christmas in July or
will it guarantee America’s littlest consumers a safe holiday season by
finishing CPSC reform now,” said Brian Imus, State Director with Illinois PIRG.
The groups said that last week’s action on establishing a
public database of potential hazards was a major step forward, but that special
interest lobbyists were standing in the way on the following key items:
Subjecting numerous
toy hazards, including the small powerful magnets that have already killed one
little boy, to the new law’s centerpiece third party testing requirements.
“It would be a tragic irony if a law passed to protect
against toy hazards didn’t require toy hazard testing,” said Nancy Cowles,
director of Kids In Danger.
Banning toxic
chemicals known as phthalates from children’s products. The Senate version of the legislation included
the Feinstein amendment to ban phthalates. It passed on the floor on a voice
vote; the House bill has no similar provision.
California and Washington State
have already imposed similar bans, the groups said.
“It comes down to risks versus benefits. The risk is to our children’s health while
the benefits go to ExxonMobil, which profits from phthalates,” said Dr. Diana
Zuckerman, president of the National
Research Center
for Women & Families. She added,
“The phthalate DINP must be included in the ban. It’s the one most widely used in toys.”
Ensuring product
safety by ensuring that product safety whistleblowers have rights. The
House bill is silent. The groups support inclusion of a Senate whistleblower
protection provision, noting that the
CPSC has a chilling “don’t talk, don’t publish” culture that stifles disclosure
of critical safety information that is also at odds with numerous laws that
Congress has enacted to protect whistleblowers in other sectors.
The groups also urged
conferees to reject an eleventh hour proposal that would preempt states from
regulating new third party testing procedures. The preemption provision is found in neither
the House nor Senate-passed bills.
“Unwise industry demands for preemption of a new, unproven
third party testing regime threaten to take state attorneys general, often the
best consumer cops, off the product safety beat,” said David Arkush, director
of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.
The
groups looked at the most recent available CPSC data for the report “Total Recall,”
released today. In the first six months of 2008, according to analysis of
available CPSC recall notices, 108 children’s products were recalled, including
45 for lead contamination and 10 for hazardous magnets. Of those 108 products, fifty-three toys have
been recalled this year already, totaling 6.2 million units. Last year by June,
there had been only 84 children’s product recalls, which included 31 toy
recalls.
“The 22% increase suggests strongly that what the toy
industry called “last year’s problem” remains very much today’s problem,” said
Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union, “and points to the urgent need
for Congress to finish action on the CPSC Reform Act.”
In June, conferees met and approved 21 generally
non-controversial items. Last week, conferees approved nine more, including the
establishment of the product safety database. In addition to the above
remaining items, the groups also believe that a pending All-Terrain-Vehicle
(ATV) amendment being proposed by the Senate must be improved if it is to be
included in the final law. Other remaining items, such as negotiating the
length in years of the CPSC reauthorization and its maximum budget
authorization, are expected to be resolved favorably to consumers and safety. The
groups’ other remaining concern is that final action be taken before the August
recess, since the agenda for fall sessions of the Congress remains uncertain.
“We can’t wait for more evidence of a broken product safety
system, more recalls, or more potentially dangerous products ending up in our
children’s hands and mouths. Congress must protect our tiniest and most
vulnerable consumers,” concluded Rachel Weintraub, Director of Product Safety
and Senior Counsel for Consumer Federation of America. “The time to finish is
now, before Congress goes home for August recess.”
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Illinois PIRG (illinoispirg.org) – the Illinois Public
Interest Research Group, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that takes
on powerful interests on behalf of its members. For 22 years, Illinois PIRG and
other PIRGs around the country have released the annual Trouble In Toyland
report, which has resulted in over 125 known CPSC toy recalls, including the
recalls of over one million toys containing dangerous magnets in 2008 alone.
Kids In Danger (kidsindanger.org) is a nonprofit
organization dedicated to protecting children by improving children’s product
safety. KID’s mission is to promote the
development of safer products, advocate for children and educate the public
about dangerous children’s products.
For more information on the other non-profit, no-partisan
consumer and public health organizations that released this report, please
visit their websites:
Consumer Federation of America (consumerfed.org); Consumers
Union (consumersunion.org);
National Research Center For Women & Families
(center4research.org); Public Citizen (citizen.org).
