Meet the new boss

The status quo ante, as they say, was as follows up until August 2008:

• You could not sell children's products with an excess of 600 ppm lead content.
  
• You did not have to test to determine that.

And that, as they also say, was the source of all of our problems in the past few years. In her prepared remarks before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (the Rush Committee), Rachel Weintraub said

To assure that products are safe when they enter the American and global stream-of-commerce, safety must be infused into the earliest stages of the supply chain. For this reason, independent third-party testing of final products, as well as components, must be required. Third-party testing entities must be independent from and have no financial relationship with the manufacturer producing the product. Testing must be conducted to identify design flaws as well as violations of existing regulations, such as those governing the use of lead paint. Components and final products must be tested at numerous stages of production and tests must be conducted randomly throughout the manufacturing process. Products should also be certified that they meet the appropriate standards and should bear a label indicating that they are certified.

Shorter Rachel: You must test. No, you must pay someone to test. They must test the components, the intermediate products, the final products. You must test and test and test. Then they should be certified that they are tested.

Shorter shorter Rachel: No test, no safety.

And she wasn't alone in this opinion.

This was all very alarming for resellers of children's products. Since every item was unique, or at least since they couldn't possibly tie them all to any reasonable lot number, they would have to test everything. That's prohibitive, to say the least. This was effectively a ban on selling used children's goods [1].

Fortunately for them, the CPSC stepped forward with the following clarification:

The new safety law does not require resellers to test children's products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold.

Woohoo! Problem solved, right? Well, ...

However, resellers cannot sell children's products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit.

Oh.

Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties.

Uh-oh.

Maybe the CPSC's former spokeswoman, Julie Vallese, can clarify? At 4:23 or so, "If they have a level of confidence that those things that they are selling is not in violation of the new lead limit, then they by all means can continue to sell those products." Simple, right? Because of your previous career as a chemical engineer, your "confidence" is an unusually accurate way of determining lead content. For the rest of us, does someone have a confidensometer? Later in the video (5:404ish), she says, "they could call the manufacturer and ask them whether or not there is any lead used in the manufacture of the product." Wow, even though manufacturers themselves cannot use this method? Or "they could use XRF technology"; well, until August, and if you have the $40,000 for a gun. Perhaps the Magic 8-ball would be as valid? "Does this product have lead ... 'Ask again later.' I guess this one goes back into the warehouse." Now that you have Vallese's non-test-based testing mastered, perhaps you would like to learn about missile guidance systems?

But many of the people who are claiming that there is no problem with this law are looking at this clarification as a triumph of the process. "See?" they are in effect saying, "You don't have to test. Just don't let us catch you selling anything illegal. All of the people talking about the expense and stupidity of this law are just exaggerating." Wow, they were so smart.

For resellers, here is the status quo post, or however you say, "from here on out" [2]:

• You can not sell children's products with an excess of 600 ppm lead content.
  
• You do not have to test to determine that.

Yes, this is much, much better than the way it used to be, way back in '07. This law is practically perfect in every way. Not absurd at all.

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[1] But not burning them. A law mandating an increased carbon footprint? Go figure.

[2] Until they drop the lead limits. And have we talked about bonding?