January, 30 2009, 12:54pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Consumer and Science Groups Set the Record Straight: Landmark Product Safety Law Makes the Marketplace Safer
Organizations Urge President Obama to Appoint New Leadership at the CPSC
WASHINGTON
In recent weeks, a number of misleading statements about the testing requirements of an important new product safety law have appeared in the media, on blogs and on other Web sites. While we have urged the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to promptly address reasonable concerns that have been raised regarding compliance, and provide better information about the new law, our organizations all agree that the law is fundamentally sound and essential to ensuring a safer marketplace. At the same time, we urge President Obama to appoint new leadership at the CPSC to help implement this important new consumer safety law.
Congress overwhelmingly passed, and President Bush signed, the landmark Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) last year, because of a dire need to stop the flood of dangerous, often life-threatening, products entering the marketplace. In 2007, there were 473 recalls of children's products, including millions of toys that contained dangerous levels of lead paint and other toxins. In 2008, consumers fared even worse with 563 recalls, including nearly 8 million toys.
In the past two months, the CPSC announced the recall of over 147,000 children's products for excessive levels of lead - including cribs, toys, jewelry, and school supplies. Three of the recalled products involved less than 500 units. These recalls prove that the law's implementation cannot come too soon. In fact, one of its most important provisions requires that children's products be tested for safety before they are sold. Few would dispute the value of this requirement, which many Americans thought was already the law.
The CPSIA is a strong consumer protection law that already provides safety regulators with the authority they need to ensure the safety of consumer products, especially those designed for children. For example, it has strengthened the agency's scientific integrity by making it easier for employees to anonymously report threats to the agency's science, and encouraging CPSC scientists to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Importantly, it also authorizes the CPSC to address issues voiced on behalf of small businesses - authority that the agency has begun to slowly exercise in some cases.
Unfortunately, heated rhetoric surrounding compliance is clouding the facts. For example, critics cite as "extreme" and "absurd," the testing for lead of products made purely from wood. In truth, the CPSC has the authority to exempt materials from testing requirements where there is no risk of harm to the public health, and it has already issued a proposed rule to exempt wood and untreated wool and cotton, which we agree is the right thing to do. The CPSC also may permit some businesses to meet the testing requirements by certifying that each component used is certified or exempt. These two simple types of rules - exemptions for materials that inherently do not pose safety risks, and allowing certification of components as free of lead and other toxins - would address nearly all of the concerns raised on behalf of small businesses.
Safety testing may impose costs on small businesses that were not already testing their products, but the testing costs have been exaggerated. Further, testing carries substantial benefits. For the first time, U.S. law will require proper safety testing for all children's products subject to mandatory standards no matter where they are made. That means big corporations can't skimp on safety by manufacturing toys in countries with lower safety standards, such as China. Further, on past occasions, small businesses have manufactured unsafe products that had to be recalled. Pre-market testing will assure consumers that products entering the market are safe. This testing also will help manufacturers avoid the substantial costs - both financial and to reputation - that can result from putting dangerous products on the market.
Critics also have claimed that secondhand retailers will have to test their products or dump their existing inventories. Both claims are incorrect. The new law does not require retailers to test and certify goods. While stores should not sell toys or nursery items that fail to meet safety standards, the responsibility and expense of certifying the safety of a product belongs to manufacturers. The CPSC has said that resellers should focus on checking their inventory for certain riskier product categories, including "recalled children's products, particularly cribs and play yards; children's products that may contain lead, such as children's jewelry and painted wooden or metal toys; flimsily made toys that are easily breakable into small parts; toys that lack the required age warnings; and dolls and stuffed toys that have buttons, eyes, noses or other small parts that are not securely fastened and could present a choking hazard for young children." The agency also said it will continue to put the most resources into removing high risk items, such as painted toys and children's metal jewelry, from the market.
As these examples demonstrate, the CPSC can provide implementation guidelines and grant exclusions from the testing requirements once businesses show that there is no risk of harm from the materials used. The CPSC is authorized to address most, if not all, the concerns of small business in a way that maintains the integrity of the law while offering relief to independent manufacturers.
Our organizations welcome commonsense, lawful exclusions from the CPSIA that do not diminish safety. Yet we are also cognizant of the fact that the CPSC in recent years repeatedly has put business interests ahead of its mission to protect public safety, and that it has a record of suppressing the research of its own scientists and technical experts if that research failed to deliver or support a particular outcome. Indeed, the CPSC's slow approach to providing guidance and information about the CPSIA has contributed to the growing resentment against the new law among small businesses.
We called on the agency several weeks ago to urge them to offer more guidance. But there are numerous other problems with the agency's implementation of the law. For instance, the Commission has expressly refused to begin work on a database that will make safety information available to consumers. Such actions demonstrate the urgent need for new, committed leadership at the agency.
The continued circulation of misinformation about the new law helps no one. The law offers important and long overdue protections for children, and it includes mechanisms to solve many concerns raised by industry. The CPSC must use its authority effectively and in a timely manner to implement this law as intended. So far, the law's implementation only highlights the need for President Obama to appoint new leadership at the CPSC immediately. At the same time, our organizations urge other stakeholders to focus their energy on joining us in seeking reasonable, readily available answers and solutions already in the law rather than attempt to weaken critical and popular new consumer protections.
READ the coalition fact sheet that sets the record straight on the CPSIA.
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"Members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza."
Apr 22, 2024
Hours after the U.S. House approved legislation that would send billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, the country's forces killed nearly two dozen people in Rafah, a southern Gaza city where more than half of the enclave's population is sheltering.
Gaza health officials said Sunday that the weekend strikes on Rafah—a former "safe zone" that Israel has been threatening to invade for weeks—killed 22 people, including 18 children. The Associated Pressreported that the first of the Israeli strikes "killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies."
"The woman was pregnant and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said," AP added. "The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family."
Israeli forces have killed more than 13,000 children in Gaza since October, but the Biden administration and American lawmakers have refused to back growing international calls to cut off the supply of weaponry and other military equipment.
The measure the House approved on Saturday includes $26 billion in funding for Israel, much of which is military assistance.
"Just a day after the House voted to send $14 billion in unconditional military funding to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's campaign of death and destruction, he bombed the safe zone of Rafah AGAIN, killing 22 Palestinians, of which 18 were CHILDREN!" U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), one of the 58 House lawmakers who voted against the legislation, wrote on social media late Sunday.
"History books will write about today and the past seven months, and how our nation's leaders lacked the courage and moral clarity to stand up to a tyrant," she added. "Shameful."
The military aid package for Israel now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is set to consider the bill early this week. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has continued to greenlight arms sales to Israel amid clear evidence of war crimes, is expected to sign the measure if it reaches his desk.
"Rather than sending more weapons to Israel, Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel."
U.S. law prohibits "arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law," according to a White House memo issued in February. The U.S. State Department has said repeatedly that it has not found Israel to be in violation of international law, a position that runs directly counter to the findings of leading humanitarian organizations and United Nations experts.
The investigative outlet ProPublicareported last week that a "special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses" prior to the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
"But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military's conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials," ProPublica noted.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in a statement Sunday that senators "should reject sending additional weapons to Israel not only because our laws prohibit military aid to abusive regimes, but because it's extremely damaging to our national interests."
DAWN's advocacy director, Raed Jarrar, added that "at a time when Israel is bracing for International Criminal Court arrest warrants against its leaders, members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza."
"Rather than sending more weapons to Israel," said Jarrar, "Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel."
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"Short-sighted business interests must be out of the room because the only way to achieve equitable livelihoods is when we have a healthy planet."
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Break Free From Plastic called the negotiations a "make or break" moment for the treaty, which is supposed to be completed in late 2024 in Busan, South Korean. However, civil society groups have expressed concern that oil-producing countries and the plastics industry will water down the agreement and steer it toward waste management and recycling, which has been revealed to be a false solution to plastic pollution knowingly promoted by the industry for decades.
The last round of negotiations concluded in late 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, with little progress made after 143 fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists attended.
Salisa Traipipitsiriwat of Thailand, who is the senior campaigner and Southeast Asia plastics project manager for the Environmental Justice Foundation, said ahead of Sunday's march that it was "crucial for world leaders to step up and put the people and planet at the forefront."
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(Photo: Break Free From Plastics)
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- Protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples throughout the treaty process;
- Dealing with plastics across their entire lifecyle;
- Reducing production as a "nonnegotiable" part of the treaty;
- Eliminating toxic chemicals and additives from plastics;
- Bolstering reuse systems for plastics that are non-toxic;
- Prioritizing first prevention, then reuse, recycling, recovery, and disposal when managing plastic waste;
- Ending "waste colonialism" by strengthening regulations for trading plastics;
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(Photo: Ben Powless/Survival Media Agency)
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Jo Banner, co-founder and co-directer of The Descendants Project, said:"Frontline community members, such as myself, are participating in these treaty negotiations with heavy hearts as our communities back home are struggling with sickness and disease caused by the upstream production of plastic."
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Rescue workers said they had removed at least 200 bodies as of 12:00 pm local time on Sunday, and they estimated that at least another 200 remained, Middle East Eye reported.
"We found corpses without heads, bodies without skins, and some had their organs stolen," the director-general of the Government Media Office said in a statement shared by Quds News Network.
"Following the mass graves at Al-Shifa hospital, it looks like Israel is a voracious death machine turning hospitals in Gaza into graveyards."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew from Khan Younis on April 7. While they occupied the city, they stormed the Nasser Medical Complex in February, arresting several doctors, damaging the structure with shelling, and rendering it unable to function as a hospital.
Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud said the bodies found in the Nasser grave included children, young men, and older women. Rescues said that some of the bodies they found had been buried with their hands tied behind their backs, according to Middle East Eye.
"Our teams continue their search and retrieval operations for the remaining martyrs in the coming days as there are still a significant number of them," Palestinian emergency services said in a statement shared with Al Jazeera.
The news came as the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Saturday to send another $26 billion to Israel, including for military aid.
"These mass graves are obvious evidence of genocide and the most unthinkable war crimes. And yet, the House just signed off on $26 billion in weapons to fuel the genocidal Israeli military, while Israel threatens a full scale ground invasion to massacre Palestinians in Rafah," the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights said on social media.
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Muhammad Shehada, the communications chief for Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, expressed shock that there was not more media coverage of the Nasser grave.
"I CANNOT find a single headline in any mainstream media about this!" Shehada wrote on social media. "Imagine it was Ukraine? or Israel?"
Over the weekend, the the Gaza Health Ministry reported that the death toll from Israel's war on Gaza surpassed 34,000, though this is likely an undercount since several people remain trapped beneath rubble.
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