Did anyone hear of the new law on testing infant to children toys and clothing?

[sunnycowgirl]

It was on the news tonight, goes into affect on Feb 10th, that any clothes and toys for infant to children, will have to be tested for lead, by a third party, which can cost around $25 to $100 a batch or item. This means ebay, homemade, garage sales, stores, anyone that sells or produces toys and clothing for kids, will have to be tested before

Comments

[sherylb]

This is all over my friends list since I have at least 4 friends that either resell clothing and toys or make items to sell for children. It is a huge over-reaction by the government to "protect the children", when, in reality it is going to put lots of WAHMs, consignment stores and others that depend on making and selling or reselling items out of business. Plus it is going to cause millions of items currently in circulation to go into landfills and it is going to be a huge strain on people that rely on resell items to make ends meet financially as the current supply dries up. There are several places people can go to protest this

[ladyleo]

Mind if I snag the info to pass along?

[sherylb]

Please do!

[ladyleo]

Passing it along everywhere I can put it.

[amberskyfire]

If it does go into effect, I'm sure that moms will be able to find away around it, such as listing the items as "collector doll's clothing size 4T," etc. Not that I think moms should HAVE to do this, but I don't think it will put anyone out of business.

I'll check out the protest sites listed above. Thanks for the heads up!

[marzipan_robots]

Considering there are women who pretend dolls are real babies (it was on 20/20 just last weekend!), I'm sure you're right.

[chrisloy]

ah but it could be risky buying clothes labeled as such because then they do not have to adhere to the other manufacturing standards such as not selling highly flammable carcinogenic pajamas for kids.

[amberskyfire]

Clothes don't have to adhere to those standards, either. All they have to do is put a label on the clothing that says it does not conform to those standards or that the clothing is not non-flammable and must be worn close-fitting. Carter's does it, so I buy my baby's pajamas from them. Carter's does not use flame retardants on their clothing. I called just to make sure :)

That's what I mean by getting around it. They can simply state that the clothing is not intended to be worn by children/used as sleepwear, etc. It's done all of the time.

[into_the_sun]

Technically, anyone who sells children's toys (homemade or resale) has to have them independently tested for safety. I think this law will go the way of the toy ones - individuals making a relatively insignificant amount of money off of clothing won't be bothered, but major retail chains will.

[into_the_sun]

Sorry, forgot to add:
I know this because I worked at a company that wanted to import hand-made toys from a South American country, but declined to do so because the cost of the safety testing would make the production of the toys not worth the artisan's time. So, as this company was rather well-known, they of course were very careful about the laws. But individuals have hand-made and sold toys in the US for decades with no problems, even after the laws were enacted.

[girliebacchanal]

This is going to ruin a lot of etsyers.

[brightsoul]

i think everyone's heard about this and i think most people are making entirely too big a deal of it. some of what they're reading into the law, as currently proposed is blown out of proportion. the scope is broad, yes, but i don't think it will effect resellers or small-time makers of natural, handmade items, the way some people are trying to spin it.

i didn't catch the segment on any news station but the simple fact that it's taken them this long to report on it, despite the uproar this has caused online over the past two or three months just reassures me that widespread panic is unnecessary.

[into_the_sun]

Second-ed