On April 1, 2008, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire signed the Children’s Safe Products Act into law. The Children’s Safe Products Act revises Washington state’s safety standards for potentially hazardous chemicals in children’s products.
The hazardous chemicals noted in the bill include lead, cadmium, and phthalates, all of which are allowable in children’s products within specified federal limits. In a statement released by her office upon signage of the bill, Gregoire said, “Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our children. The toys and products we give them must meet the highest possible standards of product safety. Parents, doctors, public officials, toy makers and retailers in Washington state all share these goals.”
Washington’s bill will lower the acceptable levels of lead for children’s toys by a greater margin than proposed federal legislation. Lead was one of the most prominent chemicals involved in children’s product recalls in 2007. Levels that were dramatically higher than the acceptable federal standard were the cause for many toy and children’s jewelry recalls last year.
The lowest acceptable level of lead in children’s products under federal safety standards is currently 600 parts per million (ppm). New federal legislation would gradually decrease allowed lead levels to 100 ppm over the course of the next few years, according to Lori Valeriano, Policy Director for Washington Toxics Coalition. Washington’s new law will lower the state’s acceptable level to 90 ppm, and then to the limit recommended by the American Association of Pediatrics, 40 ppm, with the stipulation that this goal can be met by manufacturers. No children’s products with higher levels of lead will be sold in Washington state after July 1, 2009.
Initially proposed by a coalition of Washington groups known as the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition, members of the Washington Toxics Coalition, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Washington State Nurses Association, People for Puget Sound, Breast Cancer Fund, and WashPIRG (Washington Public Interest Research Group) drew up the legislation. It was officially proposed in January 2008, Valeriano said. She also noted that Washington’s bill is more focused on prevention than federal propositions for improved safety standards.
Valeriano attributes the July 1, 2009 deadline to the time needed for safety standard compliance by manufacturers. Not surprisingly, resistance to the bill mainly came from the chemical and toy industries. When asked how the Toxic-Free Coalition combated such resistance, Valeriano responded, “There’s a lot of support for safe and healthy toys for kids.” She went on to say that the primary reason the coalition could avoid expensive lobbying efforts was due to the demand for higher safety standards by the state’s general public.
The children’s products covered in the bill include toys, jewelry, and cosmetics meant for children younger than 12-years-old. The governor vetoed banning higher levels of lead in pieces of toys such as electronics, that might contain the targeted chemicals, but contain them in chips or in a toy’s inner workings rather than on a product’s outer material. In her veto note regarding the Children’s Safe Products Act, Gregoire noted the possibility of toys with high educational value being unnecessarily banned due to lead content in an inaccessible portion of a product.
Numerous states have begun to draft their own safety standards for children’s toys through similar pending legislation, and California, Massachusetts, and Michigan have already passed their own laws. Neither Massachusetts nor Michigan laws are as aggressive as Washington’s new bill. Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health focused specifically on children’s jewelry made with lead (which is set to go into effect in June 2008), and Michigan’s bill reaffirms the federal limit of 600 ppm. In 2007, California also sued 20 major companies for distributing products containing dangerous levels of lead.
The new state laws are garnering criticism from the federal government. State-regulated lead levels are an aspect of both manufacturers’ and the Bush Administration’s objections to differing, state-regulated lead levels. An official statement released by the National Association of Manufacturers referred to the “chaos” that would be generated by state-regulated lead levels.
While differing levels of lead might cause confusion in commerce, toy companies are beginning to respond to calls for lowered lead levels. Toys R Us, for example, announced in February 2008 that they would only distribute children’s products with lead limits of 90 ppm on the “surface coatings” of the retailer’s toys. The company will also cease using batteries coated with cadmium and products containing phthalates. “[W]e have made it very clear to manufacturers that we need not wait for the finalization of the much-needed tighter federal standards that are currently pending in welcome legislation before the US Congress,” said Toys R Us chairman and CEO Jerry Storch upon the announcement of the chain’s safety initiative.
Even with federal reform and state movements to ban toxic toys, there have been 30 toy recalls by the Consumer Product Safety Commission this year, and 12 of those recalls pertained to amounts of lead that were higher than the federal limit.
State movements for safer toys is a sign of the urgency of the issue for the public, and a sign that bills such as the CPSC Reform Act of 2007 are slow to come to fruition. Washington state’s demand was evident in Gregoire’s public statement regarding the Act. “We can’t wait any longer for the federal government to take action,” she said. “Our children need and deserve nothing less.”