CPSIA Talking Points

Posted by Valerie on January 19, 2009

As you’re writing and making calls, here are some suggested talking points.

Don’t use them all; pick a few that you can effectively address based on your own experience as a parent, grandparent, or retailer. Be respectful and brief. Letters should be under one page. Written letters and phone calls are best. Faxes are good. (E-Mail is thought to be less effective, but can’t hurt in addition to some other contact.)

1. CPSIA creates the strong potential for overwhelming catastrophe in an already unstable economy.
2. Putting parents out of business and raising the cost of all children’s products does not help children.
3. We are not in favor of press releases hinting at selective enforcement. Only repeal or substantial revision will provide long-term security for the marketplace–for retailers and consumers alike.
4. This law creates a tremendous burden on any and every “small batch” children’s industry–everything from homeschooling to special needs to home crafting and more.
5. We object to the impending loss of diversity in the marketplace. If you ever buy children’s products outside of the mainstream marketplace, then give examples of changes that could impact your own family.
6. Lead cannot harm children unless it is in a form that can be ingested or inhaled. Most children’s products that contain trace amounts of lead are not at all harmful. Our freedoms as parents and retailers should not be impinged without a known risk of harm.
7. Aside from lead jewelry and lead paint, there is no known, significant risk of injury–and the CPSC already had the power to recall any dangerous children’s products.
8. Lack of regulation did not cause this problem, so increased regulation cannot be expected to help. Instead of regulating American businesses making and selling safe products, we need enforcement of current standards at our border.
9. Small businesses don’t want to be told that the CPSC has no immediate plans to come after them. Small businesses want to be LEGAL.
10. CPSIA invites frivolous lawsuits and creates new liabilities for retailers. This will damage the marketplace by increasing the cost of children’s products.
11. Children’s books and educational products should never be restricted; parents and teachers can be trusted to use them safely, without governmental intrusion.
12. Thrift stores and used book stores are an important part of our culture and economy. Their owners should not be left with an unreasonable burden on their consciences.
13. This legislation rewards the big retailers who imported the lead from their own foreign factories while it severely oppresses their small competitors and is likely to put many out of businesses.
14. The age range is beyond reasonable. Children over three generally don’t chew paint or eat toys.
15. Current inventory should be excepted. Loss of current inventory generally means bankruptcy for a retailer, since any product known to be dangerous can be easily recalled already. Even without CPSIA, 200,000 stores are expected to close in 2009; we really don’t need more job losses than we expect already.
16. CPSIA calls for a revisiting of this controversy again in 2011 and at least every 5 years thereafter as all pre-existing products are required to have lower and lower levels of total lead.
17. CPSIA calls for lead levels to go “as low as technologically feasible.” This is not a reasonable standard if the real goal is protection of children’s health.
18. Whatever costs a manufacturer or retailer will increase costs to consumers. I’m already paying enough for children’s products.

Trace amounts of lead are not usually risky, but we understand that if lead is ingested or inhaled in a sufficient quantity, it can harm or even kill. If you have an old house with cracking or peeling paint, get it checked out. Avoid painted toys, metal toys, and older toys for children under age three or children who still mouth their toys at any age. Avoid children’s metal jewelry, unless you are sure about it, and teach older children never to suck or taste toys or jewelry.  (Some Dollar Store and Hannah Montana jewelry has tested at lead levels of 50% or more–potentially deadly if swallowed.)

Reminder to Self: Read Rick Woldenberg

Posted by Valerie on

“This abstract, spiritual use of the word ’safe’ is deeply distressing to me. If people believe safety is something abstract, as though it were a kind of window onto the soul and a measure of some sort of morality, then industrial efforts to produce safety will become completely diffuse and unfocused. Safety surveillance only works if it homes in on real, known, actual risks. If we scatter our resources over all sorts of imaginary, paranoid illusions of potential risks, there will little energy left for the real problems. We cannot afford this frivolous exercise. Please keep screaming!”

Read more at Rick Woldenberg’s Learning Resources blog.

Might as well take a look at their 80% off sale while you’re at it.

That is, if you dare….

(Those are great prices on Blokus, all three versions. I think the evidence is good that playing Blokus actually SHARPENS mental acuity.)

Living dangerously….

Jacobsen Books Open Letter to HSLDA

Posted by Valerie on

Dear Mr. J. Michael Smith,

I’ve read the HSLDA response to CPSIA, and I wonder if HSLDA contacted and interviewed any homeschooling supply manufacturers or retail companies servicing homeschooling families before crafting that response. My husband and I are homeschooling parents of eleven children, and our family has sold used books, toys, games, and science supplies to the homeschooling community since 1995.

We do not believe that the impact on homeschooling families will be minimal. First, we believe CPSIA will hurt homeschooling manufacturers. Most homeschooling supply manufacturers are small batch industries. Small batch manufacturing already puts homeschooling supply manufacturers and publishers at a pricing disadvantage, due to low batch size. CPSIA will visibly affect market prices and market viability for many homeschooling books and supplies. CPSIA is also very likely to make it more difficult for small, new companies to bring new homeschooling products to the market. (Other homeschoolers know that our needs are different from the needs and interests of an institutional classroom. We like their products best, as a rule.)

Second, I do not know of any homeschooling retailer who considers this a minor issue. All of us retailers now have a burden to “be confident” that all of our products come in at under 600 ppm lead, not as whole products, but in each individual component. How can we know? Those of us who sell new and used homeschooling books and supplies have no way (short of mass-testing) of knowing whether our inventory complies or not. We retailers have no idea if our microscopes, wood puzzles, and learning toys and games comply with new guidelines that really have no basis in research. I can’t test, and based on what I’ve read of early testing by others, it looks like between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 existing educational products may not comply with the new standards.

Third, it’s also the understanding of many of us retailers that CPSIA has created a large burden of potential liability. Many of us are afraid that we might sell an educational supply that could be used improperly by its new owner. We fear that if injury results from a lack of parental supervision, we retailers will now be liable.

Please visit the Rick Woldenberg’s blog at Learning Resources for more information from an honest retailer’s perspective.

Fourth, as a homeschooling mother of eleven children, I expect to see a significant impact on my family as the prices of all children’s products rise–while product diversity decreases. We homeschooling mothers tend to buy for our children beyond the Mattel/Hasbro/Little Tikes mainstream. We tend to buy educational supplies and toys that would never thrive on the shelves of Wal-Mart; we rely on small manufacturers for much of what we use to educate our children. We would like to see our suppliers remain free to sell what we want to buy. We homeschooling moms also tend to rely heavily on thrift stores, and many of us see the “don’t test”/”must comply” “clarification” as burdening them excessively.

Finally, I think that if we homeschooling parents concede that the government has every right to dictate what we can and cannot buy and sell, then CPSIA will not necessarily be the full extent to which they will take that “right.”

I sincerely doubt that the impact will be minimal. I have read that already three German companies of Waldorf and Montessori-style toys, including Selecta, have withdrawn from the U. S. market over CPSIA. Their toys are perceived by us consumers as unusually safe and are certified by strict European standards, but these companies cannot bear the burden of increased testing necessary to sell here in the USA. We’ll miss them.

I also see homeschooling suppliers severely decreasing their product lines and changing their business models as a result of CPSIA. As one example, please see Hope Chest Legacy. This wonderful company, run by a homeschooling family, is selling all of their bound books at clearance and going to “safer” e-book publishing only because they can’t afford testing costs and perceived liabilities under this new legislation. Minimal impact? I have also heard from a large number of used booksellers who are now refusing to carry any children’s books at all–and for this very reason. They feel uncertain and unsafe, where they were once confidently legal.

My husband and I own a small bookstore where we also sell homeschooling supplies–math manipulatives, science equipment, educational games, and more. After looking at pictures of items of items that have failed testing so far, I now have no confidence and no idea what complies in my non-book inventory. Of my book inventory, I’m far from 100% certain regarding about 10% of my book inventory. Should I be forced, by my government, to look around at a roomful of wonderful educational products and wonder what is contraband? Wonder what might possibly harm a child if misused?

We have no evidence of harm from any products beyond jewelry and lead paint from China. Why, then, regulate products with no evidence of danger or risk? Why test everything? Why threaten every children’s manufacturer and retailer with increased regulation, increased costs, and increased liability? We don’t agree that the impact will be minimal. Please do take another look at this issue and talk to some homeschooling manufacturers, publishers, and retailers. Tell them exactly what the law requires of them for their businesses–and then ask them how they expect compliance to change their product selection and pricing. I think you’ll hear answers that will indicate an impact on our community that will be more than “minimal.”

Please consider the possibility that maybe homeschooling parents would prefer to speak now than to have regrets later.

Letter to Congressman Paul Ryan

Posted by Valerie on January 16, 2009

Congressman Paul Ryan
20 S. Main Street, Suite 10
Janesville, WI  53545

cc: hslda.org

Dear Congressman Ryan,

I invite you to read this excellent article at Forbes.com–
Scrap The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

Thank you so much for your good letter to the CPSC regarding CPSIA. We are grateful for anything that can be done about this legislation, but to be honest, we would prefer to see protections for parents and retailers built into the law now. We’d rather not be left hoping that the law will not eventually be enforced against us as written.

The writer of the above article has read my heart: “I want to be legal.”

My husband and I own a small used bookstore in Clinton, Wisconsin, where we sell used and new children’s products including books, toys, puzzles, educational games, math manipulatives, science equipment, and other educational products for children. Mr. Ryan, our bookstore is the sole source of income for our family of thirteen. With CPSIA, we can’t legally sell used products unless we know that they have less than 600 ppm lead in every component, but we honestly cannot afford to test every old book, puzzle, board game, and science kit that we’d like to continue to stock here. We simply don’t have the resources to determine where 600 ppm lead might possibly lurk.

Jacobsen Books is a very small company and controlling our costs is a prerequisite for the ongoing viability of our business. Mr. Ryan, our family business doesn’t have the resources of Wal-Mart or Toys ‘r Us. What we have here, with this legislation, is an unreasonable burden on our consciences, as retailers. We look around at all of our worthwhile children’s products–and we really don’t know what to do. We don’t like to think that we could be breaking the law come February 10th, but we also don’t like to think about discarding a wealth of educational products “just in case.”

As I said, we’re a family of thirteen. My husband and I have eleven children ages 18 to 2. In this economy, our family already feels the pinch, but in the future we cannot expect things to get better if the cost of making every kind of children’s products is increased. We sincerely doubt that it was really necessary to create more expenses for every kind of children’s product, more expenses for every children’s manufacturer, and more expenses for every children’s retailer. Who will need a bailout when little dresses, pants, shirts, shoes, toys, and games all increase in price, all at about the same time?

Mr. Ryan, my husband and I home school our children. Many of the products that are used for home schooling in the United States are made by very small American publishers and very small American manufacturers. A product that works for an age-graded class of twenty-five in a school housing 1000 children is not always the best product for use in a multi-graded family home school.

This is probably not widely known, but homeschooling publishers and manufacturers are already very challenged by the realities of small batch sizes. Even before the increased burden created by CPSIA, small batch sizes have made it very difficult to maintain reasonable unit cost for homeschooling products. For the same size and type of book or game or toy, homeschooling companies have production costs that far outstrip the big companies’ on a unit basis. Many homeschooling products are already more expensive and more difficult to market for this reason, and this legislation will create an enormous, further burden for the small publishers and small manufacturers that serve our community.

Extrapolate from homeschooling to special needs of various kinds and all kinds of home manufacture, and you will see that an unintended burden has been created wherever a small batch size exists.

CPSIA did exempt cotton and wool–but only provided that the resulting fabric is untreated, unprinted, and uncolored. Mr. Ryan, as a father, you know that this exemption is not helpful and does not represent a speck of relief for children’s manufacturers. After weeks of letters, phone calls, meetings, and investigations, we see that the CPSC has exempted, along with untreated wood and untreated cotton, precious and semiprecious stones. This combination of exemptions makes us wonder whether the commissioners have met any parents or children in their investigations!

CPSIA will harm small businesses and it will very likely result in the loss of some important, useful products. As the new versions of some products disappear from the market, we at Jacobsen Books will be left wrestling with our consciences over what we can and cannot legally sell. We don’t know, and we can’t afford to test. What do I do, Mr. Ryan, with a children’s microscope that was manufactured before 2-10-2009? I am not a chemist, and I do not have a laboratory. Even if I did, how much time can I invest on each piece of used educational equipment that I stock?

Mr. Ryan, God gave my children parents to protect them, and God did not give the government the authority to take our place. My husband has lead solder in his toolbox, and he lets his little boys, who are 6 and 5 years old, help him with repairs. He teaches them to help, and he teaches them to wash their hands. We like being parents here, and we want the continued freedom to *be the parents* to our children.

Yes, the United States needed to do something to keep lead-laced products from coming into our country, but it wasn’t lack of regulation that created this problem in the first place. The problem, as I understand it, was a lack of enforcement. If lack of regulation didn’t let those other dangerous toys into our country, then why would more regulation prevent future dangers? As Americans, we were all appalled when the big box companies did not properly supervise their foreign factories and imported lead-tainted products into our country, but this legislation gives the mass production companies, who were primarily at fault in 2007, an even greater advantage over their small competitors.

We like to see punishments fit crimes. If small businesses are oppressed by this legislation and cannot afford to do what mega-manufacturers can easily accomplish, then the result will look a lot like a reward.

Please don’t leave it up to the CPSIA to decide not to enforce this against us. We don’t want to be left alone to quietly break the law. WE WANT TO BE LEGAL.

Sincerely,

Valerie Jacobsen
Jacobsen Books
244 Allen Street, P. O. Box 247
Clinton, WI 53525
(608) 676-6000

Protecting the Guilty by Punishing the Innocent

Posted by Valerie on January 2, 2009

Our family owns Jacobsen Books, a small bookstore in Clinton, Wisconsin. In our store, we sell wonderful books of all kinds, including rare books, books for collectors and researchers, and books for families and children. While we love great literature of all kinds, our initial specialty and first love is children’s literature. The children’s corner is the favorite area in our store.

It’s my understanding that after February 10, 2009, it will be illegal for Jacobsen Books to sell any “children’s product” unless it has been tested according to new lead safety standards. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) requires lead testing of every batch of every children’s product, including books, and it includes no exemptions for used items, homemade items, adaptive and special needs items, or items already in inventory. The effects of this legislation could be devastating to our already troubled economy. Unless changes are made immediately, many children’s retailers are expecting February 10, 2009 to become known as National Bankruptcy Day.

Lead testing is important. I’m the mother of eleven children ages 18 years to 21 months. I love my children, and I definitely want to see my children and all American children safe and healthy. Protecting children from lead and phthalates is a good thing, but this legislation is very short-sighted. For sellers offering very low risk, very high quality products to children, this legislation threatens to destroy our small and medium-sized businesses.

Unless an exemption is added for used goods, our store will no longer be able to provide low-cost, high-quality used children’s books, but the ripple effect goes further. Hundreds of thousands of low-income families that rely on thrift stores and charities will be unable to buy clothing for their children. CPSIA specifically calls for educating thrift stores and charities on these new guidelines. Safety is a big concern, but we understand what the loss of these resources would mean to low-income families. In the early years of our family, we very often bought birthday presents and Christmas gifts for our children at thrift stores–and we still purchase most of our children’s clothing this way.

If all children’s products–clothing, toys, educational supplies, and books–will be considered “hazardous material” until tested under the new guidelines, then we will see an immeasurable, negative environmental impact. Small manufacturers and retailers, which can’t afford testing on their low-risk products, will be required to send clothing, toys, and books to the landfills. As responsible people, do we really want this?

Because there is no exemption for handmade items, this legislation may destroy numerous small home industries. Unlike the giant toy corporations, small home crafters cannot afford to have independent labs test all of the individual components of every one of their finished children’s products for lead and phthalates. The surprise in this law is that using lead-free components is not enough. A crafter making a child’s coat would be required to contract for separate testing on every component of the finished product–the lead-free outer fabric, lining, zipper, buttons, and trim. And this testing would be required for each component of each batch of every color and style. If a customer wants a hood added to that child’s coat, it will require a new lead test of all components of the entire finished product.

There is no exemption for adaptive devices for special needs children. These typically sell in very small quantities. A company making special adaptive spoons for disabled children may be making a tremendous difference in the quality of those children’s lives–but they may sell only 30 or 40 spoons per year. Even if they use only lead-free materials to manufacture their spoons, they will still be required to have every batch of every product tested for lead. At best, the prices of adaptive devices and specialty toys will increase. At worst, these items will disappear entirely.

There is also no exemption for items already in inventory. Unless changes are made to the CPSIA, the new children’s items in our store also cannot be sold after February 10th. Entire loss of inventory, with no hope for compensation, will mean bankruptcy for many children’s retailers. Will children’s products be the next bail-out?

If changes are not made to CPSIA immediately, then we will see millions of items of children’s clothing, toys, and books destroyed because they can no longer be sold in the United States. Our already burdened budgets will be pushed to the extreme as soon as we are faced with a steep rise in the cost of children’s products, due both to the extreme costs of testing and the disappearance of thousands of products from the market. CPSIA doesn’t affect only toys. It also includes clothing and shoes, the very necessities of life.

Retailers will not be able to do their own testing. We are not permitted to buy equipment or test kits to evaluate our own products. Instead, we at Jacobsen Books would need to purchase testing for every copy of every children’s book in our inventory. Since lead testing costs $100-$400 per product, it’s obvious that we’ll no longer be able to carry $2 to $5 children’s books. Unless action is taken soon, our favorite corner in our little store will no longer invite children to come, look, read, and enjoy.

What really hurts a small retailer like Jacobsen Books is that we’ve always been concerned with quality and safety in our products. We’ve made every effort to give children the very best we could possibly find for them. Back in 2007, we all read with horror about the lead contamination of products purchased from China by the biggest toy retailers in the country. Normally, we like to see the punishment fit the crime, but in this case it looks like the biggest offenders will be rewarded by the progressive elimination of their smaller competitors.

This legislation effectively bans the sale of most children’s literature. As a used bookseller and a preserver of our literary heritage, I’m opposed to book banning, regardless of the good intent behind it. I’m seriously thinking of visiting my congressman and senators, who all voted in favor of CPSIA. I’d like to stop by with a stack of some of our most beautiful children’s books–and ask them what I should do with these now “hazardous” products. Should I burn these books–or toss them in a landfill?