Everyone agrees reading is good for kids. But a federal law taking effect next month appears to deem children’s books a potential health hazard and may force libraries and bookstores to clear out entire children’s collections until they’re proved free of toxic lead and plastic.

That little-known consequence of a law passed to protect kids from tainted toys has librarians and publishers lobbying furiously for an exemption before it takes effect Feb. 10. Without a reprieve, San Jose library officials say they could be forced to close their children’s sections and send off all 700,000 volumes in them for safety testing.

“It’s truly a case of unforeseen consequences,” said Assistant Library Director Ned Himmel. “It seems so unbelievable that we’d have to close off children’s rooms. We consider our libraries a healthy place and good for children.”

Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in August to protect kids from exposure to lead and plastic. The law followed the discovery of lead paint in imported toy trains and mounting health concerns about baby bottles and toys containing phthalates, used to make some plastics more flexible.

Lawyers for the Consumer Product Safety Commission told publishers in a recent opinion that the law covers children’s books as well as toys and applies retroactively to include library collections. All books aimed at kids under 12, the commission said, need to be tested to ensure they don’t exceed the new lead and phthalate limits.

Although publishers presented the commission with evidence they say proves books don’t pose any of the health risks to children that the law intended to address, the agency has yet to be convinced.

The commission isn’t just looking at the paper, ink, binding and cover material. Many children’s books, like the Dorothy Kunhardt touch-and-feel classic “Pat the Bunny,” have pages with plastic, cloth or other material to excite young minds.

Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson says the agency isn’t telling libraries and bookstores to clear their shelves. But he said it may not have a decision on exempting books by Feb. 10 and has yet to decide what libraries and bookstores should do in the meantime.

“We’re looking at options,” Wolfson said.

The commission has not addressed whether parents should yank books from their own homes.

The law requires manufacturers and importers to have their products tested to ensure they meet the new safety requirements, Wolfson said. Retailers and resellers don’t need to test the products as long as their suppliers indicate they are meeting the requirements.

Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Casey Coonerty Protti said she already does that, so she doesn’t anticipate any changes at her Pacific Avenue store because of the new law.

Kristin Murphy, government relations specialist with the American Library Association, said in a message Thursday night to Himmel that she was “hopeful” the commission will exempt libraries, and she advised librarians to sit tight for now.

The library association says it consulted with the new law’s sponsors in Congress and were told books were never intended to be covered.

But Murphy warned that without an exemption from the product safety commission, public and school libraries would be forced “to take drastic steps to come into compliance.”

“They would either have to ban children from their libraries or pull every book intended for children under the age of 12 from their bookshelves,” Murphy wrote.

At San Jose’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, parents gathered Friday in the children’s section for the weekly Toddler Story Time event were dumbfounded by that possibility, and they dismissed any notion that books pose a health hazard.

“It’s really ridiculous,” said Meryll Quizon, as her 2-year-old son Alessandro leafed through pictures of frogs in a National Geographic kids’ magazine. “They proved once that toys from China are toxic, but for books, I haven’t seen any evidence.”

Julie Borbon, 33, another library regular whose 2-year-old daughter Julianna loves Lucy Cousins’ Maisy mouse books, said the children’s section is a blessing. Closing it, she said, “would be the worst thing that they could do.”

Contact John Woolfolk at jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com or (408) 975-9346.