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Update: Small Businesses Get One-Year Delay On Lead Law

Posted by Gayle Kesten Monday, Feb 2, 2009, 10:58 AM ET

Legislation that many businesses feared would force them to close shop has been pushed back until 2010.

As I wrote on Jan. 23, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), put forth last summer, has perfectly good intentions: to ensure lead levels in kids' items (toys, clothes, etc.) don't exceed a stated threshold. The problem for small-business owners, however, lies in the mandated third-party testing that could run them thousands of dollars per toy; that expense, they argue, will put them out of business.

Now it appears there's some time to figure things out. Late Friday the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted to push back the testing portion of the legislation, set to go into effect Feb. 10, for a year. "The stay of enforcement of the testing and certification provisions will give some temporary and limited relief to small manufacturers, home-based businesses and crafters who cannot comply with the law without incurring substantial testing costs," said Nancy Nord, the commission's acting chairman, in this statement (PDF).

The delay -- a limited "time-out," as Nord put it -- doesn't excuse any business owner (charities, thrift shops, resellers, and small retailers) from civil or criminal penalty for selling existing inventory that exceeds the lead limits of 600 parts per million. That's still going into effect next week. (Of note, in August that number drops to 300 ppm, plus the law also limits levels of phthalates, a chemical used in plastics, to 0.1 percent in children's products.)

In its story about the CPSIA delay, The L.A. Times reports that this week South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint will introduce six-point legislation that aims at exemptions for small businesses. "In this time of economic uncertainty it is inexcusable that we are placing small businesses -- the proven engine of job creation -- in such peril," DeMint said.

One group certain to back his alternatives: the Handmade Toy Alliance, which calls for the CPSIA's language to be modified to include certain exemptions for small businesses the same way the FDA does for small producers under the food labeling laws.

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