Freedom Line Blog

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is pushing the boundaries of its regulatory authority, as it’s set to issue a rulemaking on the basis of outdated data and faulty reasoning.

Specifically the CPSC, long known for its overzealous overregulation, voted to move forward in late December (in the midst of the holidays), with a draft rulemaking that would ban a class of chemicals called phthalates from some consumer products. Phthalates are used in a variety of consumer goods to make them more durable and to prevent plastics from shattering. CFIF’s Timothy Lee covered the issue more in-depth last week.

The circumstances surrounding CPSC’s ruling truly fly in the face of any pretense of scientific objectivity or transparency. The Commission completely ignored four years of the most recent data and made sure that no pesky third party scientists would point this out by refusing to open the peer review process to the public.

Placing the review behind closed doors also left the public in the dark about a new review process CPSC used called a cumulative risk assessment.  This method is so new and untested that the EPA, an agency not exactly renowned for being a model of scientific integrity, has decided to review it before using it for its regulatory decisions. The result of using this method and general overreach of the Commission could be previously safe chemicals being banned in everyday products and replaced with unknown and potentially unsafe alternatives. The level of overreach has prompted two of CPSC’s own commissioners to question its validity.

Fortunately, the CPSC has started its public review and has opened the docket for comments from the public.  Take a stand now and tell CPSC that this type of overregulation is exactly what we don’t need from them. Follow the link here to take action and comment now.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has been taken over by leftist activists, is taking comments through Friday on a proposed report on phthalates, which are used in most plastics. At the American Enterprise Institute, Jon Entine has a superb report on what’s at stake. The key line: “Federal regulators need be careful about demonizing proven safe chemicals, and replacing them with potentially risky substitutes that have not been tested.”

This is all part and parcel of a continuing story of overzealous overregulation by the CPSC. I’ve written (or done the first draft of editorials) on the broader topic several times, including here for CFIF.

The CPSIA, the law on which a lot of this is based, was another of the idiocies the Bush administration either pushed or let get through. But the interpretation thereof, going well beyond the ordinary, logical meaning of the law in order to regulate far more strictly and counterproductively than the law itself would otherwise allow, is entirely the work of the Obamites who now run the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The economy suffers as a result.