Publisher’s Weekly reports (8/2/2011):
On Monday, three years after the August 2008 enactment of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, publishers of ink-on-paper books and other printed materials suddenly received news they’d been hoping for from the outset. Both the House and Senate passed an amendment to CPSIA that exempts “ordinary” children’s books, along with a few other classes of products (e.g., all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles), from the law’s testing provisions.“It’s awesome news,” said Gary Jones, assistant v-p for environmental, health and safety affairs at the Printing Industries of America. “We still have to comply with the lead limits and the tracking labels, but not the most onerous part, which is the testing and subsequently the certification requirements. While the legislation does not specifically exclude us from certification, if we don’t have to test, we should not have to certify.”
“We knew there was a good deal of work going on behind the scenes in the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade,” said Allan Adler, the Association of American Publishers’ v-p for legal and government affairs. “But we were surprised at how fast it happened. They were working on revisions [of a previous amendment] that would bring both parties together, but we thought it would be well after the Labor Day break.”
Read the entire Publisher’s Weekly article