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(CPSC) is pushing the boundaries of its regulatory authority, as it’s set to issue a rulemaking on the basis of outdated data and faulty reasoning.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

Thank goodness for people like Anne Meagher Northup, a commissioner on the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Writing on her blog this week, Commissioner Northup provides an insider’s first-hand perspective on how big government bureaucracy suffocates small businesses unable to satisfy the sheer regulatory costs and testing burdens heaped upon such harmless everyday products as children’s toys.

What’s that you say?  You haven’t heard about the pandemic of American children suddenly dropping like flies after playing with their plastic dolls?

That hasn’t happened, of course.  But what has happened is the CPSC imposing unmanageable costs of testing and compliance upon small businesses.  To illustrate, Commissioner Northup discusses the example of a Kentucky doll maker who suddenly faces testing costs of $1500-$4500 per doll:

Last week we selected several more products to eliminate from our product offerings. The products are safe, do not violate any of the CPSIA standards and have been around for over 50 years, but they are too complicated and have too many different parts. Therefore they are too costly to have tested and retested over and over again to prove they are safe. I hope some small companies and some decent product selection can survive in this new world where all products are presumed to be guilty. The only survivors will be the ones that are safe and can also afford to prove they are safe.

The group of items that we decided to discontinue are several kinds of dolls that have lots of different colors and accessories and some plastic to test for phthalates. We would have an average about $1500/doll each time we had to test due to a batch change. If we order them 3 times per year it would be $4500/doll in testing costs to be certain that nothing had changed from any of the suppliers that provide the raw materials that make up the doll parts and/or colors and accessories. With 26 different types of dolls, that would come out to $117,000 per year we would spend on testing. Based upon our sales volume we would lose money every time we order the doll.”

Big government may not be doing much to reduce unemployment or stop destructive Ponzi schemes, but it’s certainly adept at crippling small businesses and removing harmless children’s toys from store shelves.