Bush is ‘soft on lead’

You’ve no doubt heard quite a bit about toys manufactured in China reaching U.S. stores, despite the use of lead-based paints. McClatchy’s Kevin Hall reports today on the Bush administration’s role in the story.

The Bush administration and China have both undermined efforts to tighten rules designed to ensure that lead paint isn’t used in toys, bibs, jewelry and other children’s products. Both have fought efforts to better police imported toys from China. Now both are under increased scrutiny following last week’s massive toy recall by Mattel Inc., the world’s largest toymaker. The recalls of Chinese-made toys follow several other lead-paint-related scares since June that have affected products featuring Sesame Street characters, Thomas the Train and Dora the Explorer.

Under federal regulations, lead paint is permitted in the coating of toys sold in the U.S., so long as it amounts to less than six parts per million.. The Bush administration has managed to screw this up in a variety of ways: 1) resisting better inspections of imported children’s products; 2) changing the focus on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) away from protecting consumers and towards business-friendly policies; and 3) canceling a Clinton-era drive for an outright ban on lead in all children’s products.

“The overall philosophy is regulations are bad and they are too large a cost for industry, and the market will take care of it,” said Rick Melberth, director of regulatory policy at OMBWatch, a government watchdog group formed in 1983. “That’s been the philosophy of the Bush administration.”

Except, whadaya know, the market hasn’t been taking care of it.



As long-time readers know, I have an odd sort of fascination with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is responsible for reviewing thousands of consumer products to see which, if any, pose a health risk and might need to be recalled. I thought I’d note that Bush’s agenda for the CPSC has always been fairly ridiculous. I’d even go so far as to say the president is “soft on lead.”

Earlier this year, for example, the Bush administration decided to look the other way on lead in children’s lunchboxes. Here’s the deal: the CPSC had two ways of testing these vinyl lunchboxes used by children. One involves dissolving part of the vinyl to see how much lead is in the solution; the other involves swiping the surface of a bag and then determining how much lead has rubbed off.

Using the first method, the CPSC found that 20% of the lunchboxes exceeded safe levels of lead. In one instance, a lunchbox had 16 times the federal standard. Naturally, the CPSC ignored these test results, using the swipe/rub-off tests exclusively. What’s more, as the AP explained, researchers changed their testing protocol: “After a handful of tests, they increased the number of times they swiped each bag, again and again on the same spot, resulting in lower average results.” The test results also show that many lunchboxes were tested only on the outside, which isn’t where the food goes.

Alexa Engelman, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Health, said, “They knew this all along and they didn’t take action on it. It’s upsetting to me. Why are we, as a country, protecting the companies? We should be protecting the kids.”

Well, we should be, but the administration has a philosophical problem with government regulations. If that means more kids are exposed to more lead, well, it’s the market’s problem.

Indeed, just look at how Bush has handled the CPSC. When Clinton was president, he appointed Ann Brown to chair the CPSC. It made sense — Brown had spent 20 years as a consumer advocate and served as vice president of the Consumer Federation of America, so she was a logical choice, who ended up doing a fine job on behalf of American consumers.

This is how a functional administration works — find capable, competent people to fill government posts, and the public will be well served. Then Bush was elected. He tapped Hal Stratton for the post.

A former state representative and attorney general in New Mexico, Hal Stratton never asked for [the CPSC] job, protecting American citizens from such dangers as lead-laced toy jewelry and flammable Halloween costumes. Instead, the former geology major who went on to co-chair the local Lawyers for Bush during the 2000 campaign initially wanted a job in the Interior Department. “That didn’t work out,” he told the Albuquerque Journal, “but I told them, ‘Don’t count me out’ … and they came up with this.” […] [Now Stratton has] a track record: rare public hearings and a paucity of new safety regulations, as well as regular (often industry-sponsored) travels to such destinations as China, Costa Rica, Belgium, Spain, and Mexico. But at least Stratton won’t let personal bias influence him: Despite saying that he wouldn’t let his own daughters play with water yo-yos — rubber toys that are outlawed in several countries because of concerns that children could be strangled by them — he refused to ban them in the United States.

Now, I should note that Stratton left his post in June 2006, giving Bush second chance to find a qualified person to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Instead the president picked another hack: National Association of Manufacturers lobbyist Michael Baroody.

This is an administration that puts the needs of the public behind the needs of businesses, and appoints unqualified people to key government posts to implement an agenda that favors profits over people. We’re now dealing with the results.