Toy safety

Congress was moved to enact the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 after a series of recalls involving lead-tainted toys, mainly from China. While major manufacturers and importers may have been the most visible target of the law, it has snared smaller operations with its requirements.

Thrift stores and secondhand shops were among the earliest businesses to feel the pressure of the law, which requires retailers and distributors to test toys and materials used in their manufacture, including clothing, to prove their safety for children.

Many operators had to pull items from their shelves because they were not tested. "It's been devastating for us," Kitty Boyce, owner of the Kid's Closet in Rochester, Ill., told the New York Times. The law has affected so much of her children's inventory that she has turned to selling adult merchandise.

Even library books have drawn attention of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which enforces the law, since the ink in books printed before 1986 may contain lead that could be ingested by youngsters.

"How many 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds are going to be eating books?" asked Adele R. Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops.

Manufacturers of all-terrain vehicles and motorbikes for children have also challenged application of the law to their products.

Individual toymakers working out of their own shops are also feeling the impact of the law, which was aimed more at major manufacturers and retailers. One maker of handcrafted toys estimates he will have to pay $400 for the required tests for each of the nearly 80 different items he produces in the shop of his Maine home. "It's absurd," said William John Wood.

He and other small operations and retailers have to pay labs to conduct the tests on their products, while large retailers can do so in their own labs.

Mr. Woods and others have formed the Handmade Toy Alliance to lobby Congress for changes to the law, while the Consumer Product Safety Commission considers alternatives that would impose the testing on suppliers of components or parts such as buttons. The CPSC has already pushed back for one year, until 2010, application of the law to give manufacturers and retailers more time.

Like others before them, the toymakers' predicament is being individually addressed by regulators on a case-by-case basis as complaints arise. But it will require congressional action to clarify the intent and reach of the law.