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Your Used Toys are Probably Illegal

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Rayne

Rayne

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It's nice the government is crunching down on lead contamination, but I don't think they have thought this through.

Starting February 10, it will will be illegal to sell toys and clothing not tested for lead. For every piece of merchandise sold, every component of said toy must be tested for lead whether it was made on, before or after this date.

Yeah, I really would like to see mom and pop stores try getting this massively expensive inspection operation together. The law isn't clear on private resale, but the fines are steep if you're caught selling something that exceeds the lead limit. This stuff couldn't happen at a worse time for small businesses.

Washington Post said:
The law -- the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act -- mandates that all products including clothing sold for children ages 12 and younger be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals that make plastic more flexible. The safety commission is responsible for enforcing the law.Washington Post
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Wall Street Journal said:
Source
Consumers who rely on secondhand shops for low-cost children's items might face bare shelves next month -- or risk buying toys, clothing and other items that fall short of new federal safety standards.

The new rules, which impose stricter limits on lead allowed in children's products, also make it illegal to sell recalled products. But it is difficult for thrift shops to verify whether the items they sell comply with safety regulations, says the National Association of Resale & Thrift Shops, which represents 1,000 stores in the multibillion-dollar secondhand retail industry. Stores can be fined up to $100,000 per violation. And many shops are in danger of going out of business or suffering significant losses when the standards go into effect on Feb. 10, says the group.

Unlike mainstream retailers and manufacturers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Mattel Inc., resale shops don't have the financial resources to test their inventory to ensure it complies with the new standards. Even if they could afford it, they tend to sell one-of-a-kind products and don't have samples that can be destroyed, as is often necessary to get accurate test results for lead.

The change comes as many stores in the resale industry have seen increased business from consumers seeking to stretch their dollars on everything from toys to children's clothing in the strained economy. Some 16% to 18% of Americans now shop at a thrift store at least once during a given year, an increase of two percentage points from two years ago, according to America's Research Group, a consumer research firm based in Charleston, S.C.

Stores say the quick implementation of the new limits on lead will leave cash-strapped consumers with limited options at a time when they need choices the most.

Kitty Boyce, owner of the Kids Closet in Rochester, Ill., one of the largest resale shops in the state, says she'll stop selling toys and baby furniture -- items that represent about 20% of her business -- if federal product-safety regulators don't make an exception for thrift stores by Feb. 9.

"Stores all over the country are just in an absolute panic," says Adele Meyer, executive director of the trade group, which is based in St. Clair Shores, Mich. The group estimates there are 25,000 secondhand stores in the U.S.

Of particular concern to makers and retailers of children's products is the broadness of the legislation, which they say may overreach. In addition to toys, the lead laws apply to children's clothing, electronics and sporting goods such as bicycles, all of which tend to contain lead in places unlikely to be accessed by children, companies argue. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is moving toward granting exceptions to certain types of these products, but hasn't yet finalized anything.

The thrift-store problem underscores the challenges of implementing new regulations with limited damage to the industries the government is actually trying to improve. Congress passed new laws last August to broadly improve consumer-product safety after a string of high-profile recalls involving dangerous toys and other children's products.

At the 1,000-square-foot Pennyworth not-for-profit thrift shop on a side street in downtown Silver Spring, Md., store manager Marilyn Seitz pointed to several children's products that could be questionable. The 63-year-old former prekindergarten teacher hadn't heard about the pending rule changes, but said they'd make it impossible to thoroughly monitor the many carloads of donations the shop gets each week. As she held up a colorfully painted $2 Ready Set Learn wooden puzzle in the store's toy section, she noted she has no way of knowing whether the seven-year-old item exceeds the new lead-paint limits.

Another item Ms. Seitz cited was some well-made unpainted wooden toy pieces secured in an organic-cotton bag, but the bag had drawstrings that she said could choke a child. "We try to weed out the ones we think are potentially dangerous," she said, but added that with her limited staff, it's an impossible task. Though her store doesn't sell only children's products, she's concerned that regulatory enforcement could limit sales of such items.

Employees of other thrift stores are unaware that the new legislation is coming. Calls to several resale stores in Washington, D.C., and Maryland on Tuesday afternoon were answered by people who said they knew nothing of the changing rules.

Vigilant shop managers say they routinely check product-recall lists and often detect such items and dispose of them, even refusing to sell car seats they can't be sure haven't been involved in car accidents. Still, some consumers insist on taking these items back home with plans to sell them at garage sales or on online auction Web sites such as eBay, which also says it polices for recalled items on its site.

On Wednesday, a group of consumer interest organizations urged the Consumer Product Safety Commission to work with secondhand stores to present common-sense solutions for the shops while ensuring compliance with the intent of the new legislation. The CPSC is expected to provide guidance to the resale industry as soon as Thursday.

In the meantime, CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese implied that the agency will not be focused on shutting down secondhand stores whose goods may not comply with new standards. Stores will have to make a business decision that they are confident in the products they're selling, she said.

"The agency is fully committed to carrying out the law," said Ms. Vallese. "But in terms of using the resources of the agency in the most useful way, the agency will be trying to focus on those products of greatest risk and the largest exposure" such as metal jewelry, small parts, recalled products, and other known hazards that pose the greatest risk to children.
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Walmart has the money... a mom and pop used junk store doesn't. I wonder if you could get away with this if your used junk store sold stuff as "vintage collectibles" instead of as "toys?"

"What, that over there? That's not a toy, it's a retro collectible, get out of my store."
 
Right, and that's what I'm most concerned about. The definition on what products are meant for a twelve year old and what constitutes as an actual toy are in a real gray area. Does it mean products sold to those 12 and under, or products 'intended' for kids 12 and under? And as Satoshi pointed out, the definition of a toy is in the eye of the beholder. To some it may be a toy, to others it may be a neat collectors item.

Hobbyists have a ton at stake, with a lifetime to owe to the passion of buying, trading and selling old collectibles. I'd be heartbroken if storeowners suddenly had to trash good products just to comply with these sudden rules. Enforcement on products to come, not products that already exist. If we've gotten off fine with products that exist, why start the spot check on them now?
 
Ugh.

In my opinion, the government really needs to stop with all of this fear mongering. because an extremely small percentage gets sick, the rest of us are screwed.

Come back when death tolls are a legitimately high number and aren't caused by parents being stupid.
 
God, this sucks.

I get a lot of my old Pokemon stuff from searching shelves at Goodwill and other thrift stores (found a few of my plushies there.)

Honestly, nanny-state anyone? As long as it's not illegal to OWN (ie, something blatantly laid out in state laws as illegal), the government has no business telling people what they can and can't sell.


Really hope this gets worked out soon. I really wonder 1. how this is going to be enforced and 2. if garage sales, etc, are affected in this. Because it'll be a sad day if we have cops shutting down garage sales, especially ones to help churches and other charities (I frequent a lot of those). "Hm, selling old toys? Can't have you doing that."

They managed to work out an exception for military collectors with the Stolen Valor law (basically saying yes, you can still buy old military medals for collection purposes- originally, all resale of military medals was going to be banned), so maybe they'll work something out here.
 
So what, are we going to have government agents at BotCon now? "Don't you dare sell that loose mini-bot until it's been tested for lead, or we'll lock you up!" Are the dealers at any Transformer convention or other toy shows going to have to pony up the money to test all of the vintage toys that they're trying to sell? What about all the kitbashes you can find on eBay; will they need testing as well? Where does it end?

Or to put it another way:
government.jpg
My Transformer collection hasn't killed me yet. However, this needless governmental regulation has been playing heck with my blood pressure.

EDIT: Ah, the perks of being a Psychotic-Completist-by-proxy. Prime pointed this out to me to kill the freakout virus that this needlessly is, and so I pass it on:
A post in Allspark.com's very short thread on the subject, and .pdf from the Consumer Products Safety Commission mentioned therein. If you can't be sussed to click, in short, nothing manufactured before September 2008 has to be tested. It's illegal to KNOWINGLY sell such items, regardless of date of manufacture, but frankly, the government does not have the manpower to enforce this bit on every thrift store, mom-and-pop store, and toy show dealer in the nation. It's basically another piece of nigh-unenforceable feel-good legislation. So we're good, you're good, your friendly neighborhood reseller's probably good, and the most lead-happy items that have been sold lately were of the costume-jewelry type, anyway, with some Mattel stuff in second place...the losers...
 
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Lol, SilverWynd! That picture is true...
And testing EVERY toy would be a real hassle, in my opinion. .-.
 
Now I'm hearing that this law would pretty much require children banned from libraries, because of the lead that might be present in ink...
 
Now if children eat ink, that's just stupid.

Anyways, this law would be good if they can somehow lower the costs on lead testing and everything so that small stores can partake in this too. It's better to be safe than sorry heh.

Another issue is, how exactly would one even enforce this law? I mean, unless the law enforcement is going to have toy data computers than anyone can just say(if they knew this law) that all of their toys were made before 2008, thus making the law worthless.

Well, that's one bad law in the administration.
 
This is a little ridiculous.

If a parent is seriously so overprotective that they don't want non lead-tested toys for their kids, then it's the parent's responsibility not to BUY that toy, not the government's problem.

The world is full of pansies now.

When I was your age we used to throw paint at each other.
 
This is bullshit... and exactly why our government sucks, which is why I'm COMMUNIST.
 
Turbo said:
This is bullshit... and exactly why our government sucks, which is why I'm COMMUNIST.
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...You DO know that the reason this law exists is because of the high number of toys with lead in them that were imported from CHINA, don't you?
 
Silverwynde said:
EDIT: Ah, the perks of being a Psychotic-Completist-by-proxy. Prime pointed this out to me to kill the freakout virus that this needlessly is, and so I pass it on:
A post in Allspark.com's very short thread on the subject, and .pdf from the Consumer Products Safety Commission mentioned therein. If you can't be sussed to click, in short, nothing manufactured before September 2008 has to be tested. It's illegal to KNOWINGLY sell such items, regardless of date of manufacture, but frankly, the government does not have the manpower to enforce this bit on every thrift store, mom-and-pop store, and toy show dealer in the nation. It's basically another piece of nigh-unenforceable feel-good legislation. So we're good, you're good, your friendly neighborhood reseller's probably good, and the most lead-happy items that have been sold lately were of the costume-jewelry type, anyway, with some Mattel stuff in second place...the losers...
Click to expand...

That's good. So I can still look for an Armada Cyclonus without the seller getting busted for not intensively checking it for lead.

In the meantime, what are we doing about kids who eat paste?
 
Evil Raichu said:
This is a little ridiculous.

If a parent is seriously so overprotective that they don't want non lead-tested toys for their kids, then it's the parent's responsibility not to BUY that toy, not the government's problem.

The world is full of pansies now.

When I was your age we used to throw paint at each other.
Click to expand...

But how will the parent know the amount of lead content? Is the parent expected to have a full team of lead testers on hand to test lead on every toy they want?

It's the government's problem simply because lead causes health risks to people. Most people seriously don't know exactly how much lead is put in a toy. So I guess it would be alright for parents to buy a toy with no warning on the toy and when the child gets sick or dies from the lead, it's their fault? That's what it sort of sounds like you're saying.

Martonimos, perhaps ban glue and just use glue-sticks lol.
 
But then the parents will have to go to the trouble of buying those kits! And, you know, RAISING their kids instead of letting the government in its infinite wisdom do that!

The next thing you know, people will want the government to stop trying to ban M rated games because god forbid parents have some say in what their kids play! And maybe they'll stop censoring TV networks! What will this country come to if parents actually are parents instead of letting Washington raise their kids?

/bitter sarcasm
 
Lethal Carnivine said:
But how will the parent know the amount of lead content? Is the parent expected to have a full team of lead testers on hand to test lead on every toy they want?

It's the government's problem simply because lead causes health risks to people. Most people seriously don't know exactly how much lead is put in a toy. So I guess it would be alright for parents to buy a toy with no warning on the toy and when the child gets sick or dies from the lead, it's their fault? That's what it sort of sounds like you're saying.
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No. It sort of sounds like I'm saying that if every component of a toy hasn't been tested for lead, if the parents have that much of a problem with it then they just shouldn't buy that toy.
 
Nekusagi said:
But then the parents will have to go to the trouble of buying those kits! And, you know, RAISING their kids instead of letting the government in its infinite wisdom do that!
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In all fairness...the government SHOULD prevent something poisonous from being in toys. The moment you need to test your children's toys for something that could kill them is the moment you stepped off the normal road.
 
GrnMarvl13 said:
In all fairness...the government SHOULD prevent something poisonous from being in toys. The moment you need to test your children's toys for something that could kill them is the moment you stepped off the normal road.
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By all means yes, with new toys.

I mean with the older stuff that might be a problem. In which case instead of having the government pass all kinds of legislation (which may not be the case now) for older toys, parents should be taught to test this stuff for themselves.
 
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