The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act mandates lead testing for ALL products intended for or used by children. Everything. Even if uses only components already tested as having no lead, it must be tested again for lead. (I wrote a more detailed explanation of how many things CPSIA affects and why its so poorly implementedhere)

But I don't have kids, why do *I* care? I'm not buying kids stuff.

OH, YES YOU ARE.

Your public schools are a major purchaser of children's products and YOU pay for them through your property taxes. Your schools will be paying more for every item, even if there's about 0% chance of a kid eating it and getting lead poisoning. Some items that MUST be tested for lead before you school district may buy them:
Pencils
Paper
School desks
Gym Mats
Musical instruments
Basketballs
Textbooks
Educational software
Playground equipment
Those child sized toilets they have in kindergartens and preschools


If kids are disassembling and eating a swing set, you have more serious problems than lead poisoning.

And all that additional cost actually increases odds kids will get lead poisoning. How so? The major source of lead poisoning in kids is due to paint flakes or drinking water from pipes with lead solder. Lead paint and lead solder were banned in the US in 1978. When was the last time your school was renovated? Or your home?

Many urban schools still have the same paint and plumbing from when they were first built. Or the original paint was just painted over rather than stripped. When it flakes now, out comes the lead. Usually the maintenance budget is one of the first things hit when school budgets get tight.

The most cost effective way to keep kids safe is to make sure infrastucture like schools, libraries, public housing, water pumping stations, etc have been renovated to check for lead paint and lead solder. Give them the maintenance money to remove the environmental sources of lead that are truly dangerous.

Yes, by all means, imports from countries with abysmal quality control and safety standards SHOULD be tested. They should be component tested. Afterall, those components can be used in things intended for adults too and they're not immune to lead poisoning. Testing the raw materials produces the greatest good for everybody. The US, Canada, the EU and many other countries already require testing of raw materials for safety. Making everybody check again to look for lead where they know there ISN'T lead just increases costs so we end up spending money making kids less safe.

Side note: The US does a good job of regulating for lead already. Check out the CDC statistics and you'll see a pretty steady decline. That decline can be traced towards controlling the raw materials people are exposed to like paint.

Stumble It!