Senate Panel Takes Toy Industry to Task

Sept. 12, 2007 — -- Though China pledged Tuesday to resolve the use of lead paint in toys it manufactures for the United States, today senators took toy makers and safety commissioners to task as to why those imports weren't subject to more stringent tests on American shores.

(China pledges safe toys for Christmas.)

Anything more than trace levels of lead in toys, they pointed out, has been illegal in the United States for nearly 30 years. But over the course of that time, the watchdog agency that inspects products for safety has been beset by budget cuts: Nearly 1,000 inspectors worked for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 1980; slightly more than 400 work there now, though foreign commerce has boomed.

In the wake of recent product recalls -- everything from toys to dog food to toothpaste, all imports from China -- the CPSC commissioners testified today that new legislation could better help them do their jobs.

For his part, the Mattel CEO Robert Eckert apologized to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the lead paint in toys that led to three enormous toy recalls this summer.

"I know this subcommittee and the American people want to know how lead got onto our products and what steps we're taking to ensure that this doesn't happen again. Simply put, our systems were circumvented and our standards were violated," Eckert said before the Senate panel.

In one particularly heated exchange, Subcommittee Chair Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and CPSC Acting Chair Nancy Nord went head to head.

Nord argued that the state of Chinese internal standards were "up to the Chinese."

Durbin shot back, "If this is a memorandum of understanding an agreement with the Chinese, what they do internally is not up to the Chinese if it comes to the United States. That's what this is about. I'm asking you if there's a new lead standard agreed to in this agreement with China for lead or lead paint. I've said three times. Is there or isn't there?"

Nord contended that "the Chinese have agreed to eliminate any lead paint used in toys exported to the United States."