Industry News Article
March 17, 2009
Special Edition
Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act: Update
On January 30, 2009, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) granted a one-year stay of testing and certification requirements for children's products (including books and other printed material) that are subject to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). This action, prompted in party by the Printing Industries of America and other allied industry partners, is a welcome step forward in relieving the industry of regulatory burdens associated with the CPSIA, but there are still a number of steps that need to be taken before Printing Industries wins its goal of an outright exemption for children's books and other printed material books.
In issuing the stay, the CPSC recognized that the original timetable could not reasonably be met by all affected industries. This Special Edition imPRINT summarizes what the stay DOES and DOES NOT do for printers. For your convenience, a summary suitable for printing is also available.
What Does the Stay Do for Printers?
What Doesn't the Stay Do for Printers?
Next Steps
While the stay does provide some temporary relief, it is far from a permanent solution. However, industry appreciates CPSC's recognition that the deadline was untenable and welcomes the expanded timetable to achieve a permanent exemption for ordinary books and printed material.
Printing Industries and its allies will continue to submit testing data and other requested information to ultimately make the case to the CPSC that ordinary children's books and other printed material are well below the new content requirements, and thereby should be permanently relieved from the content limits, testing and certification requirements of the CPSIA. As follow up to the recent industry/CPSC meeting, efforts to produce a thorough and adequate response to the Commission's latest request for data continue. On Capitol Hill, the Government Affairs team is advocating that Congress also urge the CPSC to fully consider industry data in issuing exemptions to the CPSIA. Absent of such permanent administrative relief as outlined under the CPSIA, legislative solutions may be considered. To date, Congressional majority leaders have stated they are not open to holding hearings nor opening the CPSIA for reconsideration, instead urging industry to pursue the exemption channels provided for in the CPSIA passed last year.
What Can Printers Do?
Printers can respond to the Printing Industries' call to action to urge the CPSC to consider the negative implications the CPSIA will have on the printing and graphic communications industry. Printers may also respond to the call to action to urge Congress to encourage the CPSC to take this consideration seriously. Customize the pre-written alert to let lawmakers and regulators know more about your business and how it may be affected by these new regulations. Thank you to those of you have taken action; currently, over 300 grassroots messages were sent in the month of January alone! Remember, the online Legislative Action Center on www.printing.org is available to all users; feel free to share the call to action with employees, industry peers and others who may be impacted by this issue.
Printing Industries will continue to keep you updated through weekly and special editions of imPRINT and on the CPSIA webpage at www.printing.org.
If you have a question about any of the issues above or other government affairs-related concerns please feel free to contact Andrew Wimer, Manager of Communications and Grassroots Advocacy, at awimer@printing.org or (202) 730-7974.
This article has later update articles: