Efforts to crack down on lead paint thwarted by China, Bush Administration
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Efforts to crack down on lead paint thwarted by China, Bush
Administration
Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: August 21, 2007 05:02:47 PM
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration and China have both undermined
efforts to tighten rules designed to ensure that lead paint isn't used
in toys, bibs, jewelry and other children's products.
Both have fought efforts to better police imported toys from China.
Now both are under increased scrutiny following last week's massive
toy recall by Mattel Inc., the world's largest toymaker. The recalls
of Chinese-made toys follow several other lead-paint-related scares
since June that have affected products featuring Sesame Street
characters, Thomas the Train and Dora the Explorer.
Lead paint is toxic when ingested by children and can cause brain
damage or death. It's been mostly banned in the United States since
the late 1970s, but is permitted in the coating of toys, providing it
amounts to less than six hundred parts per million.
The Bush administration has hindered regulation on two fronts,
consumer advocates say. It stalled efforts to press for greater
inspections of imported children's products, and it altered the focus
of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), moving it from
aggressive protection of consumers to a more manufacturer-friendly
approach.
"The overall philosophy is regulations are bad and they are too large
a cost for industry, and the market will take care of it," said Rick
Melberth, director of regulatory policy at OMBWatch, a government
watchdog group formed in 1983. "That's been the philosophy of the Bush
administration."
Today, more than 80 percent of all U.S. toys are now made in China and
few of them get inspected.
"We've been complaining about this issue, warning it is going to
happen, and it is disappointing that it has happened," said Tom
Neltner, a co-chairman of the Sierra Club's national toxics committee.
The recent toy recalls - along with the presence of lead in vinyl baby
bibs and children's jewelry - are prompting the Bush administration to
take a deeper look at the safety of toys and other imported products.
President Bush has asked the Department of Health and Human Services
to report in September on ways to better ensure safe imports. He's
also asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to consider
responses to lead paint threats to children.
But as recently as last December, the Sierra Club sued the Bush
administration after the Environmental Protection Agency rebuffed a
petition to require health and safety studies for companies that use
lead in children's products. The EPA and Sierra Club settled out of
court in April, with the administration agreeing to write a letter to
the CPSC that expressed concern about insufficient quality control on
products containing lead.
The Sierra Club's interest in lead paint in children's products grew
out of the largest-ever CPSC-conducted recall. That action on July 8,
2004, targeted 150 million pieces of Chinese-made children's jewelry
sold in vending machines across the United States. Since 2003, the
commission has conducted about 40 recalls of children's jewelry
because of high levels of lead.
In March 2006, a 4-year-old Minnesota boy died of lead poisoning after
swallowing a metal charm that came with Reebok shoes. The charm was
found to contain more than 90 percent lead.
>From 1994 until 2001, Ann Brown headed the CPSC under Presidents
Clinton and Bush. She didn't push for an outright ban on lead in all
children's products, partly because China's rise to export prowess
hadn't yet unfolded.
"Today, I would say there should be an outright ban in any lead in any
toy product," she said in a telephone interview. "If I were at CPSC
now, I'd say that trying to recall (tainted products) is like picking
sand out of the beach - it's just not possible."
Before leaving her post, Brown unsuccessfully pushed for pre-market
testing of children's products. The idea largely died when the Bush
administration took over, said Brown, who's working with Sen. Hillary
Clinton's presidential campaign. The CPSC has only 100 field
inspectors to police problems with all products sold to more than 301
million Americans. None of the inspectors are stationed in China or
anywhere else abroad.
China remains very much under the microscope. It's fighting a CPSC
proposal to bring the lead restrictions in children's jewelry to the
same levels as those imposed on toys and furniture - six hundred parts
per million, which effectively amounts to a ban.
"We have done recall after recall since 2003. We would like to move
towards a ban and make the marketplace safe," said Scott Wolfson, a
commission spokesman.
But in a March 12 filing, China was the only one of 48 interested
parties to tell the panel that it opposed new restrictions on lead
paint in children's jewelry. Guo LiSheng, the deputy director of a
Chinese global trade agency, warned against "unnecessary obstacles to
trade" and advocated international rules that allow some lead content.
He added that good product labeling was sufficient.
"We agree with the viewpoint of USA of protecting the children's
healthy and safety. And we consider that the method of stick warning
mark on the children's metal jewelry ... may be more efficient than
setting the limit of lead content," LiSheng wrote from Beijing.
Of the 400 or so product recalls this year, about 60 percent involve
products made in China, according to commission statistics.
In response to the toy recalls and tainted products, China announced
last Friday the creation of a government panel on product safety. The
government appointed Wu Yi, the vice premier and China's top problem-
solver, to head the panel.
Outside a Toys-R-Us store in Maryland's capital city of Annapolis,
Bruce Waskmunski suggested it was a no-brainer that lead should be
completely banned from children's products. He's angry about the June
recall of a Chinese-made Thomas the Train wooden toy that he bought
his son.
"The only thing lead paint is in now (in the United States) is 40- or
50-year-old buildings," he grumbled. "We've known about lead paint for
years, but we're giving away the penny to China."
To read Sierra Club's initial request for the Bush administration to
monitor lead, click here: Sierra Club request.
To read the EPA's settlement with Sierra Club, click here: EPA
settlement.