Please contact your Congressional Representatives to support CPSIA amendments!

I posted this on Etsy recently, this is a letter I sent to my Congressmen asking them to support passage of the bills that are in committee amending CPSIA. If anyone would like to use it or repost it to your own blog you're more than welcome to do so:

(This is the version I sent to my HR rep, you can use it for your senators by replacing HR 968 with S 374 and House Energy and Commerce Committee with Committee for Commerce, Science, and Transportation.)

Please support the passage of HR 968, the bill that is currently being reviewed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This bill must not die in committee! If HR 968 is not passed the entire US children's product industry will be in danger of collapsing. Effects are already being felt, I have seen many stories of libraries and bookstores removing children's books printed before 1985 from their shelves (in some cases destroying them!), and just today I saw an article that manufacturers of motorcycles and ATVs are no longer being allowed to sell bikes or ATVs marketed to kids, or even parts to repair them. Because of lead content--it's ridiculous, what child that is old enough to ride a motorcycle is going to LICK it??? That's the only way any lead content would harm a child. The ATV industry has estimated their losses in the BILLIONS of dollars. And that doesn't even touch the second hand stores and small business crafters, many of the latter got into business because they WANT to make safe alternatives to mass produced toys and other children's products but CPSIA left as-is will put them out of business. Not because they don't want to test, but because they CAN'T AFFORD IT.

Please help us keep safe affordable children's products available to the families that need them. Regulation is good but it needs to be sensible, and CPSIA is NOT.