A Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act Update

The American Library Association's Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) this week reported that a public meeting regarding the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was scheduled to take place at the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday, January 22, at 1:00 p.m. ALSC said that it would post a report on the meeting, which was requested by the Association of American Publishers, on its website as soon as possible.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has now posted on the CPSIA website a timetable entitled "Required Actions Pursuant to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008." The timetable indicates that "there will be a period of several months following February 10, 2009 [when CPSIA goes into effect] before any action would be able to be taken to enforce the law," noted ALSC.

CPSIA -- which was signed into law on August 14, 2008, in response to last year's recalls of products containing lead -- limits the amount of lead in children's products to 600 parts-per-million (ppm) as of February 10, and 300 ppm as of August 2009. In August 2011, the limit will drop to 100 ppm if it is considered technologically feasible for a given product or product category. The law requires manufacturers of children's products for children up to age 12, including books, to make accessible to retailers a Certificate of Conformity (COC) stating that their products have been tested by an independent third party and comply with lead limits stipulated in CPSIA.

In mid-January, the American Booksellers Association reached out to more than 20 children's publishers in an effort to ascertain what they will be doing to comply with CPSIA. As publisher responses are received, ABA will share the information with members via Bookselling This Week.