Here is a copy of an article I am submitting to a local paper on the CPSIA and how it is affecting artists, crafts people and small business owners in Vermont and across the USA.
When I was eighteen, I sat down in front of a sewing machine and my mother taught me to make my very first quilted project, a table runner. Once I had mastered the basics, my mother and I could frequently be seen hunting for fabrics together and bonding over thread colors. This was a wonderful time for me to become closer to my mother as she would die of cancer, just seven years later.
Today, I have taken the love for quilting my mother gave to me and have turned it into a business, Baby’s Breath Quilts, which I run out of my home. As a mother of two and a substitute teacher, I enjoy the creative freedom quilting gives me and it helps me to pay my bills each month. Working by myself, with the support of my husband and children, I have built my business up over the last two and a half years selling my quilts in galleries across the state, on-line and in craft fairs.
The government is threatening to take this all away on February 10thwhen the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) takes effect. Designed to protect our children from the harmful effects of lead and phthalates, the CPSIA will force small businesses to close on what is being heralded as “National Bankruptcy Day” (Wall Street Journal 11/18/08).
As a maker of handmade children’s quilts here in Barre, I am subject to this new law as are all other manufacturers, artists and craftspeople across the state. CPSIA (HR4040), co-sponsored by Rep. Peter Welch, states “the new legislation imposes an additional third-party testing requirement for all consumer products primarily intended for children twelve years of age or younger. Every manufacturer (including an importer) or private labeler of a children’s product must have its product tested by an accredited independent testing lab and, based on the testing, must issue a certificate that the product meets all applicable CPSC requirements.” (www.cpsc.gov).
The CPSIA requirements mean that not only do toys have to be tested and certified lead and phthalate free, but bibs, shirts, organic wool sweaters, unfinished wooden blocks, booties and baby quilts, too. Knitted afghans, slings, backpacks and dolls. Diapers, bedding, hair bows and books — the list of “children’s products” is endless. Even Forbes.com (1/16/09) says the “CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children’s items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers.”
On a substitute teacher’s salary, I cannot afford the estimated $13,000 in testing that would be required of my existing line of handmade quilts. The cost would bankrupt me. Marianne Mullen, owner of a children’s store based in Barre, says “Polkadot Patch Boutique supports over 10 Vermontmade children’s producers by selling local products in their online store (www.polkadotpatch.com). If this law goes into effect, all but one will close their doors. This law, while well meaning, will devastate small business throughout Vermont and all over the U.S.”
Barry Genzlinger of Genzlinger Family Crafts in South Burlington, says his business will be ruined by this new law. Of the 150 unique and elegant wooden tops he has ready for sale, no two are exactly alike. This would mean that every single top would have to be tested for lead and phthalates. With the majority of wooden tops selling at $7-$10 each, it is not possible for him to pay the estimated $300 testing for each item. Genzlinger believes “unless there is sufficient evidence that testing is needed, then all small crafters should be exempt.”
This is an excellent point – why require testing unless there is sufficient cause? Why should cotton quilts be tested when there is no reason to expect lead and phthalates to be present? Why test wooden tops when the crafter who made them knows there is no lead in them?
Congress was right to create legislation to protect our children from lead and phthalates, but they rushed into this law without taking the time to consider its impact upon American small businesses. At the time the law was proposed, Senator Leahy sent a letter to the sponsors of the CPSIA bill saying he was “concerned that domestic manufacturers will not be able to stay afloat in the ultra-competitive toy industry” (5/23/08). But the law is still in place and Representative Welch’s office says there is nothing Washington can do – the only recourse left is to try and work with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in charge of enforcing the law.
Small businesses and crafters have been attempting to work with the CPSC to find out exactly how they plan to interpret the law and enforce it. It is my hope that the CPSC will realize it is a waste of government funds and time to pursue lead testing in products they have no reason to expect to find lead and release a list of exempt products and materials. Neither I, nor any other small business owner, want to violate the CPSIA law, but our only option is to close our businesses on February 10thif the CPSC does not act immediately to help us.
