Toy companies cheer proposed lead rule changes

By MARCUS WOHLSEN
Associated Press Writer

Posted: Dec. 24, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — The makers of handcrafted toys received some holiday hope Wednesday with support from a federal agency for proposed exemptions from strict lead-testing regulations they feared could put them out of business.

Last year's discovery of lead paint in mass-market toys prompted the government to pass new safety rules requiring testing and labeling that mom-and-pop workshops and retailers said they could not afford.

As a February deadline for complying with the law loomed, toy makers who use benign materials such as unfinished wood, organic cotton and beeswax sought exemptions from the rules they said could apply to them.

In a memo released Wednesday, Consumer Product Safety Commission staffers recommended that the agency exempt some natural materials from the lead testing requirements.

"I think this is definitely a step in the right direction and would provide substantial and enormous relief to our manufacturers," said Dan Marshall, co-owner of Peapods Natural Toys and Baby Care in St. Paul, Minn.

Marshall and nearly 100 other toy stores and makers formed the Handmade Toy Alliance to ask lawmakers to exempt small toy companies from testing and labeling rules.

Staff toxicologists at the product safety commission told agency commissioners in the memo that some unfinished natural materials should be considered lead free. The materials include wood and fibers such as cotton, silk, wool, hemp, flax and linen.

The safety commission still must vote on the recommendations.

"The agency is diligently working on providing rules that would define some exclusions and some exemptions," said Julie Vallese, a spokeswoman for the product safety commission.

Lead paint prompted recall of 45 million toys last year, mostly made in China. Parents flocked to small specialty toy stores in the aftermath searching for safer alternatives.

In August, President Bush imposed the world's strictest lead ban in products for children 12 or younger by signing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

Small toy makers strongly back the restrictions in the bill, which they say reflect voluntary standards they have long observed to keep harmful substances out of toys. But they never thought their products would also be considered a threat.

Under the law, all children's products must be tested for lead and other harmful substances. Toy makers are required to pay a third-party lab for the testing and to put tracking labels on all toys to show when and where they were made.

Those requirements make sense for a multinational toy manufacturer churning out thousands of plastic toys on an overseas assembly line, said Marshall

But a business that makes, for example, a few hundred handcrafted wooden baby rattles each year cannot afford to pay up to $4,000 per product for testing, a price some toy makers have been quoted, he said.

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., lead sponsor of the legislation, says toy makers should not worry. Rush points out that the law already exempts products and materials that do not threaten public safety or health.

"This exemption should be sufficient to affect most companies," Rush said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

But without specific guidelines from the safety commission and a Feb. 10 deadline approaching, small toy makers felt they had no choice but to follow the law or risk facing fines of $100,000 per violation.

The product safety commission has until Jan. 5 to decide on the recommended exemptions.

Not everyone is satisfied that the proposal goes far enough to alleviate the burden on small toy makers.

Because the exemptions only apply to unfinished materials, very few toy makers will have products that are entirely spared from testing, said Julia Chen, owner of The Playstore in Palo Alto, which specializes in wooden and organic playthings.

"Let's be real and focus on these mass produced, manmade-material toys, because those are the ones that caused the problems we know about," she said.