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Klobuchar Toy Safety Measures Pass Conference Committee, Sweeping Reforms Expected to Pass Congress this Week

Senate-House Conference Committee adopts Klobuchar provisions on lead ban, labeling, and ethics in Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

July 28, 2008

Washington, D.C. – Toy safety measures authored by U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, including a ban on lead in children’s products, won key approval by a Congressional conference committee today.  Klobuchar serves on the Senate-House conference committee, which finished hammering out differences between House and Senate versions of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Reform Act, late last night.  The final bill, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008, will now go to both the House and Senate for final approval and is expected to pass this week.

“It’s important that we get this bill done and it was critical that we kept the strong Senate standards in the final bill,” said Klobuchar.  “This is historic legislation that will protect the safety of our children, and it is long past time to get these toxic toys off our shores and out of our stores.  This bill finally makes it criminal to sell recalled products, bans lead in children’s products, and I hope will give parents some peace of mind that the toys in their children’s hands are safe.”

The final legislation includes Klobuchar’s provisions to ban lead in children’s products, prevent the resale of toys that have been recalled, and require that toy manufacturers stamp “batch numbers” on children’s products and packaging so that parents and retailers can identify toys that have been recalled for safety reasons.

Klobuchar introduced the federal lead ban and other toy-safety measures last year following millions of recalls of toxic, lead-tainted toys, and the death of Jarnell Brown, a four-year-old boy from Minnesota who died after swallowing a toy charm made almost entirely of lead.

She joined with Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in authoring an amendment banning industry-paid travel at the CPSC after press reports last year that Commission staff had taken dozens of trips worth thousands of dollars paid for by industries with business before the Commission.

“This agency has become a shadow of its former self, and we need to get it back on the job,” Klobuchar said. “This bill isn't just a matter of banning lead in children's toys. This bill is a matter of finally making consumer safety laws work the way they are supposed to work, it is a matter of protecting kids from more harmful products and helping parents understand what to do when something has been recalled. And it is a matter of bringing the Consumer Product Safety Commission into the 21st century.”

In addition to Klobuchar’s provisions, the final agreement will pave the way for a publically searchable, national database that is maintained by the CPSC.  It will serve as a forum for consumer complaints to report defects and injuries from products across the United States.

The final legislation also includes other sweeping reforms that will set mandatory federal safety standards for all children’s products, including durable nursery products for infants and toddlers, such as cribs and car-safety seats. Recently, the CPSC announced that it is recalling 320,000 cribs manufactured by Jardine Enterprises because of 42 reported incidents of broken components and injured infants.

The bill will also require all manufacturers of All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) to comply with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) safety standards.  Currently, American and other established manufacturers, like Minnesota companies Polaris and Arctic Cat, voluntarily comply with the standards, but in the past decade, the number of foreign manufacturers that do not comply with these standards has risen dramatically.  This has caused an increase of sales of ATVs without emergency brakes and other crucial safety measures. The CPSIA will provide the CPSC the authority to include any additional standards that it determines are reasonably necessary to reduce unreasonable risks of injury associated with ATVs. 

The House is expected to vote on the legislation as early as Tuesday, with the Senate taking it up later in the week.

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