Maryland Toy Safety Legislation Expected to be Signed by Governor:

Despite attempts to alter the bill, legislation passes Maryland's House and Senate

by Ronni Robinson

In an attempt to strengthen restrictions on children’s products that contain lead, Maryland has joined the ranks of the few states in the United States that are taking toy safety regulations into their own hands.

As is the course with a bill becoming a law in a state, the bill has to first pass in the state’s House, then through the Senate, and finally, the governor must sign it into law. The bill is now on the governor’s desk for signing.

In the House proposed version of the bill, jewelry, toys and other children’s products in Maryland containing lead would be banned.  In February, this bill sailed through the House with a vote of 132-4 in favor of tighter restrictions.

This original bill that passed through the House would have ensured toys that contained any trace of lead would have been taken off Maryland store shelves.

WBALTV.com reported, “It would have mandated independent, certified inspection of toys for lead content at the manufacturing level and state agents would have been hired to randomly check for lead in toys or store shelves.”

The version which passed the House had certain provisions as to what kind of products required third party testing, no longer relying on the manufacturer to do the testing.

In addition, the original bill had a July 1, 2008 deadline for providing certification that toy products sold in Maryland were lead-free.

Before the bill was to go to the Senate floor toy industry lobbyists went to the Senate’s Finance Committee in an attempt to alter the proposed legislation, which resulted in amendments to the bill.

Julie Livingston, spokeswoman for the Toy Industry Association, said that the bill “could ban many educational and fun toys Maryland children have played with safely for years.”

The Baltimore Sun reported, “As amended by the Senate Finance Committee, the bill would have delayed any action for more than a year and also would have been superceded by any standards the federal government might adopt, even if they were less stringent than Maryland’s.”

The Toy industry presented its own amendments to the Senate Finance Committee, which included changes such as toy companies having the ability to conduct their own lead testing.

The lobbyists also proposed that the bill wouldn’t go into effect until June of 2009.

Livingston said, “It will be virtually impossible for toy manufacturers to comply with the aggressive timetable established by the Maryland Legislature for implementation of this bill. Therefore, many safe toys will simply not be available to parents if this bill becomes law.”

Furthermore, “This legislation is inconsistent with European standards and pending federal standards that recognize inaccessible parts do not pose safety risks to children,” Livingston said.  (Inaccessible parts are parts or components that are not reasonably accessible to the child user so as to present a health hazard.  For example, an electronic chip in the product to which the child doesn’t have access to ingest.)

Senator Robert Zirkin, who according to Gladden has an 8 ½ month old daughter and was personally offended by the late changes, led the charge on the Senate Floor to try to convince his fellow Senators to vote for the original House version of the bill rather than the amended version.

The Senate listened to Zirkin’s arguments and ultimately, in early April, the bill passed through the Senate in its original form, the same bill that sailed through the House of Delegates. It is expected that Maryland’s Governor, Martin O’Malley, will sign it into law at the end of April.

Senator Lisa A. Gladden feels that passing this bill, in the same format that it passed through the House, was “one of the best things that we did this year.”

Gladden said, “The reality of it is this type of problem is much easier to deal with on the front end instead of the back end. Toy companies don’t want to deal with it on the manufacturing end because it’s too expensive.”

Testing has proved that exposure to lead can harm a child’s central nervous system. “When children have exposure to led, there is a higher likelihood of that child needing special education as well as other problems in life. It could ruin kids’ lives forever,” Gladden said.  “It’s a small price to pay for quality of life.”