Letter to The Honorable Nancy Nord, Acting Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission

Letter

Letter to The Honorable Nancy Nord, Acting Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission

Durbin, Nelson, Schumer, Klobuchar Urge CPSC Action on Chinese Toys

United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), sent a letter today to Nancy Nord, Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), asking her to assess, within seven days, whether the United States should detain and inspect all children's products from China that contain paint. This letter follows yesterday's announcement that nearly 1 million units of popular Fisher-Price toys were recalled due to toxic levels of lead found on the painted toys. A copy of the letter is attached.

"How many more deadly toys do we have to recall before Washington responds?" Durbin said. "We need meaningful safety standards for imported products and a CPSC with the resources to do their job. American families should not be playing Chinese Roulette at the toy store."

Recently, the FDA took a similar step with regard to Chinese seafood. Following the discovery of tainted seafood, the FDA stopped shipments at points of entry and required the exporter to pay for a series of 5 independently verified product safety tests before they would be allowed into the US.

Durbin and Nelson are among the leaders on the issue of consumer safety in the Senate. Durbin introduced Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act, which will dramatically expand CPSC's ability to protect American consumers. This bill increases the authorized funding level for the agency over the next five years, repeals the requirement that the CPSC have a quorum to engage in regulatory actions, decreases the amount of time that firms have to respond to the information CPSC releases, institutes a civil penalty for retailers that knowingly sell a recalled product, and increases maximum fine for violations. Senator Nelson was an original cosponsor of that bill.

Also, last month, Senator Nelson, with Durbin as a cosponsor, introduced the Children's Products Safety Act which would require all children's products to be certified as having met rigorous product safety standards by independent laboratories. Nelson met with CPSC Chairman Nord today.

"The most important thing at this point is to make sure these products don't get into the hands of our kids," said Nelson who met with Chairman Nord today. "I told her that this isn't a partisan issue; we just need to stop these hazardous products before they come into this country."

Senator Nelson is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which also has oversight authority over CPSC. Last month the committee held a hearing on the safety of Chinese imports.

"There is no question that these recalls call in to question our ability to keep dangerous toys out of the hands of our kids," Schumer said. "The fact that every week we have to frantically pull Chinese goods off store shelves shows that our safeguards are failing and we need to act fast to fix them. Too many Chinese toy manufacturers put the bottom line ahead of safety as their government continues to look the other way. We need to beef up our safety inspections and standards before more kids and their families are put in danger."

"I am outraged that once again toys need to be removed from our homes and our stores because they have been coated with poisonous and lethal lead paint," said Klobuchar. "It's clear that the CPSC doesn't have the tools it needs to adequately safeguard the public. Equipping the commission with authority and resources it needs must be at the top of our legislative agenda, and I'm working with my Commerce Committee colleagues to make that happen."

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is responsible for protecting individuals and families from dangerous products including toys, child safety seats and power tools. Last month the Senate Appropriations Committee reported a Durbin drafted spending bill out of committee. Durbin, Chairman of the Financial Services and General Government subcommittee, included $70 million budget increase for CPSC. This increase is $7.2 million above last year and $6.8 million above the President's budget request. This new funding will allow CPSC to hire new employees in the areas of hazard identification and reduction, field operations and compliance, and funds for critically needed IT improvements.
The text of the letter appears below:

August 2, 2007

The Honorable Nancy Nord
Acting Chairman
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
4330 East West Highway
Bethesda, Maryland 20814

Dear Chairman Nord:

We are writing in response to the recent string of recalls of defective products manufactured in China. Chinese-manufactured goods have been found with a variety of health and safety violations, including millions of items that contain hazardous levels of lead that far exceed statutory limits.

Yesterday's recall announcement of nearly 1 million units of popular Fisher-Price toys, including popular Elmo, Ernie, and Dora the Explorer figurines, is merely the latest instance of hazardous Chinese-made children's products that endanger American consumers. In the last few months, 1.5 million units of Chinese-manufactured Thomas & Friends trains and accessories were recalled due to hazardous levels of lead in surface paint and more than 3 million units of Chinese-manufactured Magnetix building toys were recalled due to the serious health risks associated with swallowing the easily dislodged magnets. A disproportionate number of recalled children's products on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website were manufactured in China.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children are more vulnerable to lead poisoning than adults. Swallowing large amounts of lead can lead to blood anemia, severe stomachache, muscle weakness, and brain damage. Even at lower levels of exposure, lead can affect a child's mental and physical growth.

In multiple places, federal regulations and statutes ban the use of lead paint in children's toys. For example, Title 16, Chapter II, Part 1303 of the Code of Federal Regulations (16 CFR 1303) bans "toys and other articles intended for use by children that bear lead-containing paint". In addition, the Hazardous Substances and Articles Administration and Enforcement Regulations (15 CFR 1500) ban the use of surface paints containing more than .05 percent lead in toys or other articles intended for use by children. These regulations are referenced in the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F963 Standard (Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety).

We are very troubled by the numerous, flagrant violations of U.S. safety standards found in products imported from China. We want to ensure that the CPSC is aggressively pursuing actions that will stop the flow of dangerous products. Several weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acted in response to a similar trend of dangerous seafood imports from China by detaining certain products at points of entry until they had been verified as safe by independent third-party testing.

We ask that the CPSC conduct a risk analysis of children's products manufactured in China within seven days to determine whether there is sufficient risk of lead contamination to pursue a ‘detain and test' program similar to the FDA's approach to seafood. We would greatly appreciate it if you would share the results of this analysis and discuss with us what next steps would be appropriate.

Thank your for your attention to this matter. We look forward to hearing from you within seven days.

Sincerely,

Richard J. Durbin Bill Nelson

Source