Oh, forget one thing, don’t drink mineral water, because it contains lead too.

Actually, 90 ppm is really difficult to control. If there is a rhinestone contains 80ppm, and you send it to different Lab. companies to test, you will find that there is a deviation for 30 to 50ppm, some lab. company may get the result for 70ppm and it passed, but some of them many get the result for 120ppm and you found that failed.

Besides, many factories bought the gun to test the lead contains for rhinestones, it’s good for 600ppm, but it’s almost unless for 90ppm, almost definately not accruate.

I think to keep the CPSIA lead content level in 300ppm is more appropriate, don’t further lowered, otherwise, it will be a hazard. Not because rhinestone manufacturers cannot produce it, but how to have the test result is a big problem. Now, to get a lead test result from Hong Kong SGS take around 10 working days, that means two weeks waste for production. If it failed, another two weeks…….

If anybody need lead free rhinestone, you could ask your suppliers to search them from China Guangzhou Chong Tai garment and accessories markets, most of factories for lead free rhinestones have office there.

Things that resemble crystal but are below the lead limits — which in practice basically seems to mean certain plastic and glass imitations — remain lawful to sell for children’s use.

I suspect that if folks were to grill their various members of the house or senate who voted for this stupid act, that you’d find that yes, they DID intend to eliminate the “meanace” of lead in Chinese toy imports (if said meanace exists or not is really irrelevant to the point I’m making – BTW, I agree with the gist of your post that the whole lead scare is a phantom meanace).

What I suspect you wouldn’t find is an intent by most of those who voted for CPSIA to do all the collatral damage that has been documented here on Overlawyered – banning the sale of pre-1985 childrens books, rhinestones, kiddie sized motorcycles and the rest. It was supposed to be about lead in toys, period. That collatral damage was caused by a very poorly drafted act, that no one read, that no one thought about and was passed in a hurry so they could say they were doing SOMETHING.

See a parallel with certain things that are going on in Congress currently? I do. Big fat bills, with hundreds or thousands of pages, passed in a hurry since their overarching ‘goals’ sound plausible if you don’t think too hard, and no one takes the time to sit down and really understand the consequences of the details.

A careful reading and study of the bill would have revealed all the effects were seeing today, prior to passage and with full understanding of the effects. But hey, why expect our legislators to actually understand what they’re voting on. To do so would be to expect them to actually work and be able to think through the consequenses of their actions.

I admire your animus toward CPSIA and the legislators that voted for it, but your emphasis on “reading the bill” is misplaced. The American Public had a hysterical reaction to lead tainted Chinese toys. Our media should have, but didn’t, make clear that the contamination was according to a regulatory standard and not a scientific standard. There was lead in some paint, which paint was put on roughly 500,000 toys. First of all, paint binds strongly to plastic, and any lead would be negligible if it were to be ingested. No child was ever at risk from the the toys. Bur our highly, and expensively, educated populous jumped to an idiotic conclusion.

Based on the false premise that incidental lead is a hazard to children, our legislators passed a law to clamp down on this threat to the health of our children. Reading the law is not going to show that the lead hazard itself is bogus. This is the problem. Mrs. Murray, and her colleagues, cannot understand relative risks. Education does not work in this regard. Look at the overeducated parents who avoid vaccines. I wish I knew what could be done. Walter Olson is a voice in the wilderness for CPSIA, and Paul Offit for vaccines. But we need the intellectual power of Oprah Winfrey and the crew of 60 Minutes.

The more hard core the enforecement, the more unreasonable the CPSC HAS to be, the sooner the idioic Congress will be forced to overturn this idioic law.

Remember this one voters. Ask your Senator or Representative at your local town hall this month. Ask them how much of this bill (the CPSIA) they read. Ask them if they intended to ban rhinestones, kids bikes and kids motorbikes. Ask them if the planned to put mom and pop wood toy makers out of business. Ask them if they intended to force the destruction of pre-1985 childrens books. When they answer no, then ask them why the didn’t READ THE STUPID BILL. Ask them why the didn’t study the text and figure out the effect PRIOR to voting on it.

Congress – what a bunch of morons.