Enrique Barajas was poking around the little shops of the Toy District in downtown Los Angeles the other day with his 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son. The store shelves were packed with inexpensive imports, mostly from China.
Barajas, 27, said he liked buying toys for his kids, but he found it hard to know what was safe and what potentially could harm them.
"The government should be doing more," he said. "It's never enough, what they do."
That's about to change.
After months of wrangling, congressional leaders finally came to terms last week on landmark legislation that represents the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. product-safety rules in decades.
The Senate approved the bill Thursday after a similar vote by the House of Representatives a day earlier. President Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law.
"This is a huge deal," said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety for the Consumer Federation of America. "It's going to change the products in the marketplace."
Not immediately, though. The various provisions of the bill would be enacted at different times over the coming months. That means shoppers will have to remain vigilant when buying toys and other goods this holiday season.
By next year at this time, though, the product-safety landscape could be very different. Among other things, the legislation would:
* Beef up the Consumer Product Safety Commission with new funding and resources. The commission is responsible for overseeing the safety of 15,000 product categories, including items as varied as toys, cribs, power tools and kitchen appliances.
* Require mandatory third-party testing of products for kids age 12 and under. Most such products are now subject to a mix of regulatory standards and frequently make it to store shelves without being tested in advance.
* Ban the sale of children's products containing lead and certain types of phthalates, which are chemicals used to soften plastic that have been linked to long-term health problems.
* Provide safeguards for whistle-blowers who alert authorities to unsafe products and industry practices.
* Establish a searchable database of all reports of deaths, injuries or illnesses related to consumer products.
The legislation would increase the penalty cap for civil fines to $100,000 from $5,000 for individual penalties and up to $15 million for violations involving multiple products. It also would require tracking labels that would allow officials to trace a product back to its factory in the event of a recall.
