Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act effective yesterday

A new federal law intended to protect children from dangerous levels of lead and phthalates goes into effect yesterday - the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act. The law was passed by Congress last August and established the following regulations for certain chemicals in children's products.

• Phthalates: Children's products (including toys, pacifiers, sippy cups, and mattresses) cannot contain more than 0.1% of certain phthalates, which are chemicals that make vinyl and other plastics soft and flexible.
• Lead: Consumer products intended for children 12 and younger may not have more than 600 parts per million of lead in any accessible part.

While the intent of this law is to protect children from exposure, there is much confusion about its implementation and enforcement. The law mandates testing of most children's products, but many small retailers and small manufacturers (including craft-type products) argue that the testing provisions are prohibitively expensive. Retailers are unclear about what they are supposed to do at this point. Another point of confusion is for second-hand and thrift stores...

I suspect it will be some time before it's all sorted out. So, even though the law is technically in effect as of yesterday, that is no guarantee that there aren't still lots of products out there with levels or lead and/or phthalates that exceed the levels recommended.

The official government website for the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act is available here, but it contains a lot of official language that is hard to wade through. An brief overview article is available at WebMD (note: this article served as a resource for this post).