On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:35:04 +0000, wrote
(in article
):

In August the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act was passed as a
reaction to the wonderful garbage China has been sending us in the
form of lead painted toys. Unfortunately Uncle Sam, in all his
infinite wisdom, has overreacted with a law that it is completely
impossible for any small business (that's you) to comply with. I
know, you're shocked.

I encourage you to investigate the law and contact your
representatives.

Some links:
http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/cpsia.html
http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/


-Kevin

This is beginning to sound like dear old Great Britain.

The politician's answer is always to make new laws rather than enforce the
ones we already have.

Politicians here never legislate to deal with _the problem_ they just pass
restrictive and constrictive laws to deal with a different, imagined
situation which they have hyped into existence and the legislation then,
maybe, sort of catches the problem indirectly. The huge wave of political
"concern" and media hype over owning knives, for example. They already did it
with guns (It is now illegal to train for an Olympic sport involving shooting
in Britain, yet there are shootings on the streets daily 'cos the ones doing
THAT sort of illegal stuff aren't bothered and the law would rather close
down a target shooting club than make sure that street gangs don't carry
guns)

Gun club members were never the cause of any problem. There has been
sufficient law to deal with illegal firearm use for a very vet long time, but
it is not enforced. That would cost money and involve the police going up
against the ant-social elements. Let's target everybody else instead...

The politician's answer is always to make new laws rather than enforce the
ones we already have.

Now penknives, Bowie, camping knives are all being vilified and made
illegal.. apart from the "ceremonial" swords, knives and daggers that Sikhs
carry, and guess what, even though such "ceremonial" weapons rank highly in
stabbings and woundings, they are not being touched while it'll soon be
totally illegal to go camping with a buck knife...

Lead paint?

When did a western manufacturer last use lead paint?

I've nothing against selling non-lethal toys generally but all this
sledgehammer to crack a walnut thinking makes my blood boil.
If you are going to paint a toy for sale locally, all you'd need to do,
logically, is use finish materials with a known COSHH (or whatever standard
you colonials use) certification rather than constantly re-inventing the
wheel at _every_ stage of the process.

To prevent the sale of lead-filled Chaiwanse pacifiers, spiky-eyed dolls and
arsenic-flavour candy bars, all you need do (broadly - I'm sure there are
detail problems to work out) is make the supply of such stuff illegal - with
massive fines for supply for resale - and have a bit of random testing. This
would push the onus onto the importers who would then have the incentive to
only import stuff that would pass through all the hoops and wouldn't affect
domestic manufacturers producing stuff with known ingredients.

The politician's answer is always to make new laws rather than enforce the
ones we already have.

But, as I said, politicians are unlikely to tackle the real problem. They
want to be seen to be apparently doing something so they can crow about it
but they'll make damn sure that any new legislation won't upset any apple
carts that they happen to be hitching a ride on and is, whatever else,
"politically correct" and won't offend any pressure groups with money or
"God" on their side. Damn everybody else.