Hey Americans- are you familiar with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer? No? Well, maybe you should be. It was passed after the lead in in children's toys scare from China. As the enlightened representatives that members of Congress are, they surely would be circumspect about passing a new law...right?
What you (and I) may not have realized with this new safety law that was passed is that along with provisions that limit lead and all that bad stuff, the law also states that products created before the law went into effect cannot be resold in the used market. No Ebay, no thrift stores. If you cannot afford the price of that brand new toy, well tough.
Even more worrisome to me is the provision that it is unlawful to sell or distribute children's books published before 1985. Wait, what?!
Unless the books are subjected to testing at prohibitive costs, it is verboten.
Funny, some of us would kill for an earlier edition, illustrated Beatrix Potter book, but now in the States if it is older that from 1985 we might as well burn it. What else are the thrift stores going to do with all their books?
In other news- if you have an illegal stash of Winnie-the-Pooh, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Jean De Brunhoff, Hans Christian Andersen, or Brothers Grimm (I am rehashing my favorite childhood reading) and you want to unload it, let me know immediately.
What you (and I) may not have realized with this new safety law that was passed is that along with provisions that limit lead and all that bad stuff, the law also states that products created before the law went into effect cannot be resold in the used market. No Ebay, no thrift stores. If you cannot afford the price of that brand new toy, well tough.
Even more worrisome to me is the provision that it is unlawful to sell or distribute children's books published before 1985. Wait, what?!
Unless the books are subjected to testing at prohibitive costs, it is verboten.
Funny, some of us would kill for an earlier edition, illustrated Beatrix Potter book, but now in the States if it is older that from 1985 we might as well burn it. What else are the thrift stores going to do with all their books?
In other news- if you have an illegal stash of Winnie-the-Pooh, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Jean De Brunhoff, Hans Christian Andersen, or Brothers Grimm (I am rehashing my favorite childhood reading) and you want to unload it, let me know immediately.
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"In the town of Bedubble, far out on the Moor,
there lived a small tot, who was not more than four.
Little Annabelle Ruth (her close friends would recall)
had swallowed the string from a dilly-dunk ball..."
Read the rest at the link below!
http://www.easyfunschool.com/the_CPSIA_meets_Dr_Seuss.html
Dr. Seuss Meets the CPSIA