{"id":2624,"date":"2009-01-09T14:11:17","date_gmt":"2009-01-09T18:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/?p=2624"},"modified":"2009-01-10T01:38:02","modified_gmt":"2009-01-10T05:38:02","slug":"cpsia-and-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/09\/cpsia-and-libraries.html","title":{"rendered":"CPSIA and Libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsc.gov\/ABOUT\/Cpsia\/cpsia.html\">Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Consumer_Product_Safety_Improvement_Act\">CPSIA<\/a>), passed by Congress last August and due to be enforced beginning February 10th, is designed to protect children from exposure to products containing unsafe levels of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lead\">lead<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phthalate\">phthalate<\/a>.\u00a0 All well and good.\u00a0 There has been some controversy regarding the application of the law to resale shops and such, but there now seems to be the potential for this to impact libraries in a big way.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently the General Counsel of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsc.gov\/\">Consumer Product Safety Commission<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Consumer_Product_Safety_Commission\">CPSC<\/a>) has ruled that the law applies to public, school, academic, and museum libraries.\u00a0 This means that all products designed for children under 12 years of age (think children&#8217;s books) would need to be tested or removed, or children under the age of 12 would need to be barred from visiting the library.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wo.ala.org\/districtdispatch\/?p=1322\">American Library Association&#8217;s district office in Washington D.C. has issued a District Dispatch summarizing the issue<\/a><\/strong>, and they have also released <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wo.ala.org\/districtdispatch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/cpsia.pdf\"><strong>a letter sent to congressional members last month<\/strong><\/a> requesting an exemption from the law, including a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rrd.com\/wwwCPSIA\/home.asp\">research done by the publishing community on the potential for exposure to these chemicals through books<\/a> (which was rejected by the CPSC General Counsel).<\/p>\n<p>thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=1178546863&amp;ref=nf\">Sia Stewart<\/a> for her Facebook posting of the dispatch!<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;- 10 minutes later &#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>The CPSC posted a clarification yesterday that suggests that libraries might not qualify&#8230; they don&#8217;t mention libraries, and their General Counsel previously said that it does apply, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsc.gov\/cpscpub\/prerel\/prhtml09\/09086.html\"><strong>but what they state does suggest an exemption<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(didn&#8217;t see this until after posting)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed by Congress last August and due to be enforced beginning February 10th, is designed to protect children from exposure to products containing unsafe levels of lead or phthalate.\u00a0 All well and good.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/09\/cpsia-and-libraries.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2921,2935,2943,2948],"tags":[3391,3005,3054,4116,3948,4768,4117,4767,4227],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-government","category-libraries","category-news","tag-american-library-association","tag-chemicals","tag-congress","tag-consumer-product-safety-commission","tag-facebook","tag-general-counsel","tag-sia-stewart","tag-washington-d-c","tag-washington-dc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSU5g-Gk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}