CPSC Grants Stay on Lead Certification

On Friday, January 30, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that it had issued a one-year stay of enforcement for certain testing and certification requirements for manufacturers and importers of regulated products, including books, intended for children 12-years-old and younger. The requirements are part of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), which added certification and testing requirements for all products subject to CPSC standards or bans.

The stay will provide "limited relief from the testing and certification requirements [that] go into effect on February 10, 2009, for new total lead content limits (600 ppm), phthalates limits for certain products (1000 ppm), and mandatory toy standards, among other things," a CPSC press release noted. While manufacturers and importers of children's products will not have to test or certify to these new requirements for another year, their products will nonetheless need to meet the lead and phthalates limits, mandatory toy standards, and other requirements.

As to whether the one-year stay means publishers can stop worrying about their inventory depends "on whether their bookselling distribution partners ... stop insisting on immediate certification of their inventory as some have been doing since November," said Allan Adler, vice president of legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers (AAP). "One would hope that this will be the case, since booksellers have never had any problems with lead in books prior to the CPSIA's enactment, but they've nevertheless been 'spooked' by their own potential liability under the CPSIA for selling books without the certainty of proof that the books would test safely below the total lead content limits of the new law."

AAP will making a submission to CPSC in the next two weeks providing "further evidence and documentation of the points asserted in its January 22 presentation to the CPSC science team as part of a request for a formal determination by the Commission that paper-based books without play value (i.e., books without bells and whistles that are simply intended to be read or written in) should be exempt from the CPSIA requirements based on evidence that the total lead content in the component materials of such books inherently do not rise to the limits under CPSIA," Adler reported.

In announcing the stay, CPSC noted that it will give "the staff more time to finalize four proposed rules, which could relieve certain materials and products from lead testing, and to issue more guidance on when testing is required and how it is to be conducted." The stay will remain in effect until February 10, 2010, at which time, a CPSC vote will be taken to terminate the stay.

More information is available on the CPSC website.