One of the unanticipated effects of the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is that you won’t be able to buy children’s books published before 1985. Among those lamenting that fact are the Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, overlawyereed.com’s Walter Olson and radio talk show host/Orange County lawyer Hugh Hewitt. Olson and Hewitt have been all over this story.
How did Congress come to ban pre-1985 children’s books? Well, it’s simple. The CPSIA banned all products aimed at children under 12 which contain even trace amounts of lead. Children’s books printed before 1978. Books printed before 1985 may have been printed with lead in their pigments.
Never mind that those trace amounts have never been shown to injure anyone. Never mind that 11-year-olds, for example, are not in the habit of gnawing their books, chipping off the print and swallowing it. The CPSIA gives the Consumer Product Safety Commission no leeway to employ common sense; it just bans.
And also, as a payoff to Democrats’ trial lawyer paymasters, it provides for enforcement not only by the CPSC but also by state attorneys general and by trial lawyers. Thrift shops and used book stores stocking pre-1985 children’s books could be sued out of existence by your state’s Eliot Spitzer or by your local (insert name of recently jailed trial lawyer). Who wants to take that chance?
Congress so far has refused to revisit the issue, and stores are pulping perfectly wonderful old children’s books. This is hope and change?
