Consumer Product Safety Commission

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has given preliminary approval to changes in new lead-testing rules after complaints that the measures could have forced thrift stores and sellers of handmade toys to dispose of merchandise or even go out of business. If formally adopted, the changes approved on a first vote Tuesday would grant exemptions to last year's Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which seeks to ensure that products for children do not contain dangerous amounts of lead.

President Obama finally named his pick to head the long-neglected Consumer Product Safety Commission on Tuesday and called for a big increase in funding for the agency. That's the good news. The bad news is that it looks as if he's using the appointment as a political pat on the head for a prominent supporter, and not necessarily as a first step toward kick-starting an agency that for too long has come up short in safeguarding the public.

Environmentalists are battling small businesses to preserve a law that would pull children's products that may contain lead and chemicals from shelves by next week. The environmentalists won a round Thursday when a federal judge overturned a decision by a government commission and said manufacturers and retailers could not sell children's items containing phthalates, which are chemicals used to soften plastic, after Tuesday.

The battle over a product safety law escalated Friday, when federal regulators turned down a request by manufacturers to postpone Tuesday's deadline requiring them to stop selling goods that contain unsafe levels of lead. Manufacturers responded by warning that thousands of jobs could be lost if the law was not changed.