CPSC Reform Act

Floor Speech

CPSC REFORM ACT -- (Senate - March 04, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am proud to be a member of the Commerce Committee that passed this legislation through the committee under the leadership of Chairman Inouye, Senator Stevens, and the Consumer Subcommittee Chairman Pryor. I am also glad this legislation includes the bill I introduced that finally put a mandatory ban on lead in children's toys.

This legislation has been called by the Wall Street Journal as ``the most significant consumer-safety legislation in a generation.'' That comes from the Wall Street Journal. But what this is about is not all the details of all the toys, which I am going to talk about in a minute, and the 29 million toys that have been recalled and what this has meant to our economy, but what this is about are these little children.

Senator Pryor and I just left an event where two children, their families, their mothers, were there to talk about what had happened to them. The first was this little boy named Jacob. His family is from Arkansas. The mom painted this picture for us. Look at this little boy. She painted this picture that I will never forget, of her standing in the kitchen one day and all of a sudden they see their little boy and he is practically limp. Just like that he went from being a happy little boy playing.

What happened is he had swallowed one of these Aqua Dots toys, one of these toys you put in water and it expands to an animal or whatever it is. He had swallowed it. So he is getting more and more limp, and finally the ambulance comes and they end up in the hospital. Within an hour, he is completely unconscious. They have no idea what is wrong. Unconscious. They thought maybe he had swallowed a little toy, maybe something that you would think would be in his stomach creating some indigestion or something such as that, but the hospital tries everything they can think of. They thought maybe he had accidentally gotten into their medicine cabinet and they didn't know it and took some medicine and something happened. So they gave him drugs to try to reverse it, but he wouldn't wake up. It was a complete puzzle because they didn't know how this could have happened. Nothing they tried worked.

Finally, 6 hours later--and the doctor said if he hadn't been there, he wouldn't have believed it--with all these tubes connected and everyone thinking they are going to lose him, he wakes up and he is fine. And they think: How could this happen? What is wrong? And they simply don't know.

So they call the company that manufactures these Aqua Dots and they try to write them. The mom gets home the next day and gets on the Internet with bloggers trying to figure out what could be wrong. She writes letters to the company, trying to get information.

Well, finally, they tested him some more and they tested these Aqua Dots some more. And what did they find? They found that the Aqua Dots contained a chemical that was really the date rape drug.

The date rape drug, as a prosecutor, I can tell you that we handled those cases where women have been slipped one of those drugs in their drink; they are suddenly completely out of it and do not know what happens. You know the crimes that have occurred as a result there.

But here is this little boy swallowing a dot, a dot that had the date rape drug in it manufactured in China. And that mother stood here with Senator Pryor and me and told this moving story and said: This cannot happen to other parents.

She said: The Senators in this body, why do they not think if this happened to their kid or their grandkid where they suddenly swallow a little toy and are out like that. It is like swallowing a gumball, out like that for 6 hours thinking they are going to die.

Then there was another mother who came from Oregon. She told the story of her son, whom we see now years later, Colton. When he was very little, he swallowed a charm they had gotten from some one of those little vending machines that you put your money into.

He swallowed it. And all of a sudden she said he started acting completely lethargic, not at all like the little toddler he was. And they brought him into the hospital and they found out that charm was 39 percent lead, 39 percent lead.

Now, their story, unlike the story of little Jacob, did not end there, because he has that lead permanently in his system. And today, years and years later when they go to the doctor, he is still tested for elevated lead levels. And, in fact, even a few days after he got home, after they had gotten the charm out of his stomach, he bit his cheek and his cheek swelled up to the size of a golf ball because of the lead that was in his system.

That is what we are talking about--moms getting little charms that their kids swallow, which used to be maybe if you swallowed a penny, having this kind of health effect.

We all know what lead can mean. I certainly know in Minnesota where we had a little boy whose mom was not with us today. The mom was not there because her heart is broken. Her little 4-year-old boy died when he swallowed a charm that turned out to be 99 percent lead. And he did not die from choking, he did not die because it blocked his airway, he died because that lead seeped into his system day after day. And when he died, he was tested at three times the normal lead level.

In 2007, nearly 29 million toys and pieces of children's jewelry were recalled because they were found to be dangerous and, in some cases, deadly for children. As a mom and a former prosecutor and now as a Senator, I find it totally unacceptable that these toxic toys are in our stores and on our shores. As my 12-year-old daughter said when she found out that the Barbies were being recalled, she said: This is getting serious.

The provision of the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act that I authored addresses some of the most serious discoveries of this past year. And that is the lead that has been surfacing in these toys. The toy that little Jarnell Brown swallowed that led to his death was made in China. It was 99 percent lead.

The toy that little Colton swallowed that nearly led to his death and has led to elevated lead levels in his bloodstream for many years was 39 percent lead.

These deaths, these injuries have been made so much more tragic by the fact that they could have been prevented. These little boys should never have been given these toys in the first place. It should not take a child's death or severe injury or a child swallowing an Aqua Dot with a date rape drug to alert us that there is a problem in this country.

Parents should have the right to expect that these toys are tested and that these problems are found before these toys get to the toy box. For 30 years, we have been aware of the dangers poised by lead. We all know about it from the lead paint standard.

But what is ironic to me is we have a Federal standard for lead paint, we have a standard, but we have never had a standard for lead in toys or jewelry; never had a standard for those little pieces of jewelry that will end up in kids' stomachs, or how about teenage girls who are sitting in class and chewing on a charm that they may have around their neck--never had a standard; it has all been voluntary.

It is not just these cheap trinkets that are being discovered to contain hazardous levels of lead. Last summer the CPSC recalled 1.5 million Thomas & Friends trains, including the Thomas the Train caboose, the Thomas the Train rail car, the box car, after they were discovered to be coated with poisonous lead paint.

A lot of those parents had bought these toys because they were wood, they thought they would be better for their children. Many of these products reaching retail for between $10 and $20 apiece were on the market for almost 3 years before they were discovered to be defective, putting hundreds and thousands of toddlers at serious risk for lead ingestion and brain damage.

What is even worse is what happened after the initial recall. This shows you how out of hand things have been because there have been no set standards and no good regulations coming from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

After more than 3 months passed, RC2, which is the company that makes Thomas the Train sets, realized that their first recall was incomplete. They had asked for a recall and then they found hundreds of thousands of additional products, many of which had been sold in the same packaging with trains that had already been recalled, were coated with lead paint and also needed to be recalled.

Clearly, the RC2 Corporation that manufactured Thomas & Friends trains was embarrassed by its safety record. It apologized to its customers, saying it would make every effort to ensure that this would not happen again. To help encourage customer loyalty, which you can understand in a competitive market, and to get them to return those recalled toys, RC2 said: Okay, parents, we are so sorry this happened. We are going to give a bonus gift for your trouble.

Well, the bonus gift backfired in a big way because it was discovered that 2,000 of these bonus gift trains that they had given to parents for them sending back the recalled products contained lead levels four times higher than legally allowed, leaving parents of toddlers across the Nation to deal with a double recall. All of these toys are manufactured in China.

The burden should not fall on parents or kids to tell if a toy train is coated with lead paint or if a toy has been assembled so shoddily that it will come apart in a toddler's mouth. How would a parent ever think an Aqua Dot would contain the date rape drug?

I think it is shocking for most parents when they realize we never have had a mandatory ban on lead in children's products, all we have had is this voluntary guideline. It is shocking that until this legislation is passed, the Consumer Product Safety Commission cannot actually enforce a lead ban in children's toys.

In response to a series of letters I wrote to Chairwoman Nord in August about the danger of lead in children's products, the chairwoman responded on September 11. In that letter, Chairwoman Nord acknowledged that:

The CPSC does not have the authority to ban lead in all children's products without considering exposures and risk on a product by product basis.

Now, that is really going to help the family of Colton to find that out, that our powerful Federal agency, with which we thought we had solved all these consumer product issues back in the 1970s, that this a safe country, does not have that authority.

Chairwoman Nord went on to say that: Were the CPSC to attempt banning lead in all children's products, it would likely take several years and millions of dollars in staff and other resources.

This response makes it clear that Congress cannot wait for the CPSC to act to ban lead from all children's products. We have been waiting for years. These parents have been waiting for years and years. This mother who spoke with us today wrote all these letters. She has been trying to lobby by herself on behalf of her son to make sure this did not happen again.

And what she told me this morning was her heart broke 2 years after her son had this horrible experience when she heard about the case of Jarnell Brown who had died. She felt her efforts were in vain.

Well, this Congress has a duty to make sure they were not in vain. Parents should not have to wait years for the CPSC to take action we already know is appropriate. The medical evidence is clear and overwhelming, lead poisons kids and there must be a Federal ban.

To talk a little bit more about the specifics, this legislation effectively bans lead in all children's products by classifying lead as a banned hazardous substance under the Federal Hazardous Substance Act. The bill sets a ceiling for a trace level of allowable lead at .03 percent of the total weight of a part of a children's product or 300 parts per million.

To put that in some perspective, California has standards right now of .04 for children's toys and .02 for jewelry. The voluntary ban that is not even mandatory right now that the Consumer Product Safety Commission uses is at .06. We have worked with pediatricians, we have worked with consumer experts. We set this at a very smart standard of .03 percent of trace levels. That ceiling would take effect in 1 year, allowing retailers and manufacturers to comply; 2 years later the legislation would then further drop the amount of allowable lead in children's products to .01 percent of the total weight of a part or 100 parts per million.

Now, if the CPSC finds you can actually go below the threshold, which a lot of pediatricians have argued we can do in this country, that we can even get down to zero lead, that would be great.

What this law says is you do not have to be stuck up there at .01, which is of course a small amount of trace lead. You can, in fact, do a rulemaking and go lower for certain products or for all products.

This legislation gives the CPSC the power to lower levels even further as science and technology allow.

The legislation before us today also sets an even lower threshold for paint. Under this bill, the allowable lead level for paint would drop immediately to 90 parts per million. This lowered threshold is critical because science has shown that as children put products in their mouths, it is the painted coatings which are most easily accessible to kids. Every parent of a toddler knows that to be true. They can see, if any parent looks in their toy box, all the little teeth marks, and they know they put them in their mouth.

Under current law, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has adopted this voluntary guideline of .06 percent. It is voluntary. That is part of the reason it takes so long, that is part of the reason we have had this huge delay. This puts in a mandatory guideline at .03 going down to .01.

This legislation changes what is a bad system, a broken system, and gives the CPSC the tools it needs immediately to go after the bad actors who used lead or lead-based paint in their products.

To me the focus is simple: We need to get these toxic toys out of our kids' hands, not just voluntarily, not just as a guideline but with the force of law.

Millions of toys were being pulled from these shelves, 29 million last year. Right in the middle of Halloween, they were pulling the little funny teeth that you put in your mouth, Aqua Dots, Thomas the Train, Sponge Bob Square Pants, Barbie dolls, you name it. It gives the force of law to pull these toys from the shelves.

As if the appalling number of recalls this year is not bad enough, these recalls illuminated other problems with pulling toys from the store shelves, the daycare center floor or the drawer under the kid's bed.

This I actually heard from my friends. Because once these recalls happen, every parent runs to the kid's room and says: Okay, I have got to find the toy that has been recalled. Now, how are you going to tell the difference between the brunette Barbie doll, the blonde one, the one that had this outfit on. This is practical when you are a mother. How are you going to tell the difference between this caboose or this box car? So they are looking at these toys trying to figure it out, putting them up to the Web site. Because, guess what, there is no batch number on these toys.

I have to tell you, most parents, when they get their kid a toy, do not keep the packaging. My mother-in-law may be an exception to that, but most parents do not keep the packaging. So what this legislation does is it says:
The batch number will be on the toys whenever practical. They are not going to go on a pick-up stick, but whenever practical, the batch number will be on the toys so when there is a recall, the parent is going to be able to figure out which toy it is, and also the batch number is going to be on the packaging.

Why do we need this? Because we do know that large retailers such as Toys ``R'' Us and Target, the minute there is a recall, they have been very good about stopping all sales; they do it through their computer system.

Well, some of the smaller mom-and-pop retailers do not have that capability, not to mention eBay and those kinds of things. So we want to make sure the batch number, in this legislation, requires it not only be on a toy but also on the packaging.

This legislation, though, does a lot more than ban lead in children's toys and to help parents identify recalled toys. It brings consumers the protection that has been lacking for almost two decades. As we all know, the CPSC's last authorization expired in 1992, and its statutes have not been updated since 1990.

Not surprisingly, the marketplace for consumer practices has changed significantly in the last 16 years. And we have seen through recall after recall how ill-equipped the Consumer Product Safety Commission is to protect consumers. Today, the Commission is a shadow of its former self, although the number of imports has tripled, tripled in recent years.

So what you have seen is a tripling of imports, products coming in, and then what have you seen with the staff? Well, have you seen quite a drop in the staff. The CPSC staff has dropped by almost half, falling from a high in 1980 of 978 people who worked there. Okay. Well here we go, 978 people. And what do we see in 2007? Well, we have 393 today.

You wonder how are these date drugs getting into our system, getting on to our shores. You don't have the staff adequate to monitor these toys. So while you have seen a tripling of imports coming from China and other places, you have seen an enormous decrease in the staff that regulates them. In fact, much has been made of a guy named Bob who is the only official toy inspector at the CPSC. He is retired. He was out in a back room testing toys by dropping them to the ground. He had all these toys on his desk. That is what we are dealing with, while we have seen a tripling of imports and toys and jewelry that have tested to be 99 percent lead.

What have we seen now with the recalls? We have actually seen a huge increase in the number of recalls. As you know, part of it is because finally you have had the businesses, once this hit the streets and was all over newspaper headlines, saying: We finally better start testing these products more frequently, which was a good thing. But we have seen in 1980, 681,300 recalls. In 2007, we have seen 28,773,640 recalls, all toys that either were in parents' homes or were sitting there on the toy shelf ready to be bought.

Let's look at a comparison so you can see why. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. Probably my 12-year-old daughter would see what is going on. When you look at this comparison, in 1980, you had only 681,000 toys recalled. Then you go up to 2007, where you had 28 million recalled. Look at the staff comparisons. When you have 681,000 toys recalled, the staff is up here at 1,000. When you have 28 million toys being recalled, you have a staff that is half of what it used to be. So there is a graphic depiction of what we are dealing with.

What does this legislation do? It puts 50 more staff at U.S. ports of entry in the next 2 years to inspect toys and products coming into the country. Not only does this bill give the CPSC the necessary funding and staff, it also gives the commission the ability to enforce violations of consumer product safety bills. We have seen too many headlines this year to sit around and think about this problem and say: It is just going to solve itself. The market will take over.

The market has been broken. The CPSC has been broken. This is the time that Government comes in, which is reasonable, and works with business, as we have done. I am proud of the work Toys R Us has done with us, as well as Target, which has always been helpful in working with us. They know it has had an effect on their bottom line.

Here is what this bill does. We can beef up this agency that has been languishing for years. We can put sensible, responsible rules in place that make it easier for them to do the job. This is not just numbers on a chart. This is about a little kid that just in the last year, in the year 2007 in the United States, could swallow just a little toy, which kids have done for centuries, and end up in a coma, unconscious from a date rape drug. This bill is about numbers. This bill is about our economy. But more than that, this bill is about these kids.

I urge my colleagues to support it. I thank Senator Pryor and the other members of our committee for their leadership.

I see Senator Durbin from Illinois. I thank him for his great leadership on this bill. It is the most significant consumer safety legislation in our generation, as the Wall Street Journal has said. We have an opportunity, and we must work swiftly.

I yield the floor.

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