Thursday, August 16, 2007

Lead fallout.

Momsrising has been lobbying the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to police the lead issue. Any such effort will be fruitless because the CPSC is, essentially, a joke - a safety organization in name only.

...the CPSC is not taken seriously, with a dearth of money, staffing, enforcement authority and leadership. Its budget is $63 million -- less than half of its original 1974 budget, if one corrects for inflation. (With inflation the budget should be $149 million, he says.) In 1980, the CPSC had a staff of 978. Now its staff is less than 400.

...Congressional investigators recently visited the CPSC's laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland, and according to Mierzwinski found it "like a bad high school lab."


Edwards is calling on the Administration and democratic leaders in Congress:

"As one father to another" -- to "take immediate action to stop the growing crisis of dangerous toys being imported from China." Specifically Edwards called for "mandatory, independent third party testing" of toys.

Given the current state of the CPSC, a legislative fix appears to be the only answer.

No comments: