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U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog
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December 05, 2007
CPSC reform may move in House committee, groups launch new safety website
While a notice hasn't yet been posted to the Energy and Commerce website, staff have been noticed that the CPSC bill, HR 4040, will be considered in committee tomorrow Thursday. We and other advocates remain concerned that the versions of the bill we have seen fail to adequately protect the public health as much as S. 2045, its Senate counterpart, does. We are working to improve its deficiencies, including the following: HR 4040's provisions on third party testing of toys, civil and criminal penalties for wrongdoers, the public right to know about product hazards and state attorney general enforcement of the federal law are all weaker than the Senate bill's companion provisions. It totally lacks Senate provisions guaranteeing that consumers injured by products will have common law rights to recover damages and to protect product safety whistlebowers at CPSC and private firms.
In other news, a coalition of environmental health groups has launched a new website -- www.healthytoys.org -- with a searchable database of lead-laden, and other toxics-laden toys. As the Washington Post's Annys Shin reports in Toy-Safety Data Released On Web Site: Parents worried about toy safety after a record year of recalls can now look through a list of more than 1,200 items that a coalition of public interest groups has tested for lead and other harmful chemicals, though toy industry officials say the list may cause unnecessary alarm. The coalition, led by the Ecology Center of Ann Arbor, Mich., found more than 200 items that contained unsafe levels of lead, as well as hundreds of others that had little or no lead. The results are scheduled to be released today in an online database at http://www.healthytoys.org.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at December 5, 2007 06:28 AM
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