Saturday - February 14, 2009

The Most Transparent Government Ever

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don’t conform. The law has hit thrift stores particularly hard, since many children’s products have long included lead-containing (if harmless) components: zippers, snaps, and clasps on garments and backpacks; skateboards, bicycles, and countless other products containing metal alloy; rhinestones and beads in decorations; and so forth. Combine this measure with a new ban (also retroactive) on playthings and child-care articles that contain plastic-softening chemicals known as phthalates, and suddenly tens of millions of commonly encountered children’s items have become unlawful to resell, presumably destined for landfills when their owners discard them. Penalties under the law are strict and can include $100,000 fines and prison time, regardless of whether any child is harmed.

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

Not to mention that those older books may not have been quite so leftist in their agenda. Ahem. But let’s put used book sellers, flea markets, and garage sales out of business, because one stupid kid might eat a picture of Brer Rabbit. Notice that this hasn’t actually happened, but it might, so our gov passed a law.

And banning books? Destroying the past over an idiotic overreaction to a microscopically minuscule threat? Extremely hard to believe this was done in innocence. Typical knee-jerk government reaction though ... but book banning ... very hard not to think the N-word there. The REAL n-word, in all it’s 1939 dark horror.

Funny ... I’ve handled lead bullets by the thousands. I used to run the wave solder machine at the electronics factory. I’ve know EE types who are almost never without a soldering iron, sucking in the vapors for years. And almost none of us have wound up wearing the stylish heavy white canvas jacket with back zip and the extra extra long sleeves. I think the whole Lead Will Kill You phobia is more than a bit overblown. Yes, it can mess you up. But we’ve removed darn near all of it from our society. The little bit left is of no consequence. No, children’s toys should not have lead paint on them. But books? Give me a frickin break. You are pushing it too damn far.

The U.S. government banned lead paint in 1978, and U.S. oil companies began phasing out leaded gasoline in 1975. Since then, the percentage of children with high levels of lead in their blood has plummeted from 88% in the 1970s to 1.6% in 2005.

Eliminating lead from gasoline, paint and other products has paid off: Lead concentrations in the air have declined about 96% from 1980 to 2005. Only two U.S. counties now have lead levels that exceed federal air-quality standards (Lewis and Clark County, Mont., and Jefferson County, Mo.).

Yet while local, state and federal figures show that fewer children now suffer from lead poisoning, lead still harms 310,000 children in the USA, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. In Milwaukee alone, officials in 2006 found 1,414 cases of high lead levels. About 53,000 houses here need remediation.

Most children these days have substantially less lead in their bodies than they did a generation ago. But whether they’re “safe” from lead remains open to debate.

Thirty years ago, many children “ran around with blood lead levels that would curl the hair of any average pediatrician” today, says Philip Landrigan of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

As environmental lead levels began dropping in the 1970s, the average level of lead in children’s blood did, too, from about 18 micrograms per deciliter to 1.7. Today, children whose blood tests show that they have at least 10 ug/dL of lead in their blood are considered at risk of lead poisoning and usually get medical attention.

Safe lead levels were higher in the 1980s. Research persuaded the U.S. Public Health Service to gradually lower the “action” level of blood lead from 60 to 10 ug/dL.

There you have it in black and white. Lead poisoning is still a danger because the action level - ie The Panic Button - was lowered in 1991 to 1/6th of what it used to be.

Approximately 310,000 U.S. children aged 1-5 years have blood lead levels greater than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, according to CDC estimates. That’s fewer than 2 percent of children in that age bracket.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/14/2009 at 01:31 AM   
Filed Under: • Nanny State •  
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