Consumer Product Safety Legislation Creates New Perils for Imports

Implications: This bill can significantly impact commerce.  Product liability and the ability to import products from developing countries may be acutely affected. Analysis includes not only who the bill hurts, but who it may help.

Analysis: This bill would give state Attorneys General (AG) power to prosecute federal consumer product safety regulations. AG's are typically look for high profile cases to get themselves in the news. That's why some joke that AG stands for  "Aspiring Governor." Just ask Eliot Spitzer.

Giving sate AG's additional powers should make anyone involved in commerce shake in their boots.

Further, the legislation would raise the caps on fines and lower the permissible level of lead in products to levels barely measurable, regardless of the fact that despite all the toy recalls this year, children were never actually at risk of lead poisoning from the low level of lead in the toys.  For more on this, See: TOXIC TOYS: FALSE ALARM.

The real risk of lead poisoning comes from old pain in dilapidated buildings, where levels of lead are 500,000 parts per million. The toys being recalled only exceed 600 PPM. 

Yet the bill would lower the  threshold to an unnecessary 100 PPM over for years.  This would do nothing to protect children or consumer.

The  beneficiaries of the bill would be plaintiff's lawyers, AG's and perhaps the makers of "green" toys who may benefit from increased paranoia about toy safety.