The new Book Burning (CPSIA)

[MKSheppard]

It's for the CHILDREN!

The New Book Banning
Children’s books burn, courtesy of the federal government.
12 February 2009

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don’t conform. The law has hit thrift stores particularly hard, since many children’s products have long included lead-containing (if harmless) components: zippers, snaps, and clasps on garments and backpacks; skateboards, bicycles, and countless other products containing metal alloy; rhinestones and beads in decorations; and so forth. Combine this measure with a new ban (also retroactive) on playthings and child-care articles that contain plastic-softening chemicals known as phthalates, and suddenly tens of millions of commonly encountered children’s items have become unlawful to resell, presumably destined for landfills when their owners discard them. Penalties under the law are strict and can include $100,000 fines and prison time, regardless of whether any child is harmed.

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

At any rate, CPSIA’s major provisions went into effect on February 10. The day before, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published guidelines telling thrift stores, as well as other resellers and distributors of used goods, what they could safely keep selling and what they should consider rejecting or subjecting to (expensive) lead testing. Confirming earlier reports, the document advised that only “ordinary” children’s books (that is, made entirely of paper, with no toylike plastic or metal elements) printed after 1985 could be placed in the safe category. Older books were pointedly left off the safe list; the commission did allow an exception for vintage collectibles whose age, price, or rarity suggested that they would most likely be used by adult collectors, rather than given to children.

Since the law became effective the very next day, there was no time to waste in putting this advice into practice. A commenter at Etsy, the large handicrafts and vintage-goods site, observed how things worked at one store:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of children’s books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just can’t believe it! Every book they had on the shelves prior to 1985 was destroyed! I managed to grab a 1967 edition of “The Outsiders” from the top of the box, but so many!
People who deal in children’s books for a livelihood now face unpleasant choices. Valorie Jacobsen of Clinton, Wisconsin, who owns a small used-book store and has sold over the Internet since 1995, commented at my blog, Overlawyered: “Our bookstore is the sole means of income for our family, and we currently have over 7,000 books catalogued. In our children’s department, 35 percent of our picture books and 65 percent of our chapter books were printed before 1985.” Jacobsen has contacted the CPSC and her congressional representatives for guidance, but to no avail. “We cannot simply discard a wealth of our culture’s nineteenth and twentieth children’s literature over this,” she writes. She remains defiant, if wary: “I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I’d love to run a black market in quality children’s books—but at the same time it’s not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before.”

Jacobsen also worries that any temporary forbearance on the part of the CPSC, which has said that it does not plan a reseller crackdown any time soon in the absence of evidence of risk, could be abrogated without notice in the future. For one thing, new commissioners appointed by the Obama administration are expected to show less sympathy in regulating business than the current commission. In addition, the 50 state attorneys general have been empowered to enforce the law on their own, and frequently take much more aggressive legal positions than those of the federal government, sometimes teaming with private lawyers who capture a share of fines imposed.

Seizing on the “collectible” loophole, commenter Carol Baicker-McGee declared: “If nothing happens to change this law soon, I promise I will spend whatever money and devote whatever space I can to buying up these older books. I’ll be happy to label myself a collector (and I’m subversive enough to leave the books lying around where kids might ‘accidentally’ read them).” But this strategy, aside from its overtones of furtive evasion, will provide limited legal help to sellers. Under the law, they’re liable if their products will commonly be understood as intended for children’s use, even if not labeled as such.

A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards. The blogger Design Loft carefully examines some of the costs of CPSIA-proofing pre-1985 library holdings; they are, not surprisingly, utterly prohibitive. The American Library Association spent months warning about the law’s implications, but its concerns fell on deaf ears in Congress (which, in this week’s stimulus bill, refused to consider an amendment by Republican senator Jim DeMint to reform CPSIA). The ALA now apparently intends to take the position that the law does not apply to libraries unless it hears otherwise. One can hardly blame it for this stance, but it’s far from clear that it will prevail. For one thing, the law bans the “distribution” of forbidden items, whether or not for profit. In addition, most libraries regularly raise money through book sales, and will now need to consider excluding older children’s titles from those sales. One CPSC commissioner, Thomas Moore, has already called for libraries to “sequester” some undefinedly large fraction of pre-1985 books until more is known about their risks.

The threat to old books has surfaced so quickly in recent weeks that the elite press still seems unaware of it. The wider pattern of CPSIA’s disruptive irrationality and threat to small businesses has been covered reasonably well by the local press around the country. Some papers have investigated particular aspects of the law—the Los Angeles Times has tracked its menace to the garment industry, and the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal the general plight of thrift stores—but almost no one has cared to consider the law’s broad array of unintended consequences, let alone ask what went wrong in the near-unanimous rush to passage of this feel-good law.

The New York Times, which last year vigorously cheered the passage of CPSIA in both its news and editorial columns, occupies a class by itself in almost completely ignoring the law’s wrenching effects as its effective date has arrived. The Times used to cover the book business, as well as apparel, retailing, and product design, to name a few of the sectors hit hard by CPSIA. Yet the paper has remained entirely silent on the law in recent weeks, aside from one brief wire-service item and a post on the paper’s automotive blog, Wheels, about the law’s effect on children’s dirt bikes (now forced off the market). On Wednesday, the Times ran an editorial solemnly condemning “book banning”; on inspection, the editorial turned out to praise an ACLU lawsuit against a school district that had removed a library book from the shelves because of its allegedly over-favorable view of Castro’s Cuba. In any wider and more systematic prospect of book banning, the paper has shown no interest.

Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and has covered CPSIA in depth at his blog, Overlawyered.

[MKSheppard]

Additionally:

Link

Please forgive me for writing a library related CPSIA post. I work in a library part-time, so my livelihood is threatened on all fronts.

Last Friday, the CPSC issued a press release (not an official rule) on their intended enforcement plan come February 10th. As you know, not much has really changed for us. The CPSC may not actively pursue certain groups, but State Attorney Generals and guerrilla groups still might. It is more of the "you still have to comply even if we don't suspect you or ask for proof" mantra. One hot little item in this press release is that the CPSC is not concerned about books printed 1985 or later. This means that libraries and book publishers now need to worry about books printed pre-1985. Do we test or throw books out? How do we sort through our collections and keep kids from checking out pre-1985 book? With this blog entry, I try to show how it would be impossible to do it.

Caveats.
Some of these numbers are best guess estimates. It appears impossible to run a report detailing the total number of books with a pre-1985 publication date. The creators of this cataloging system never devised an easy way to do this but who would ever think we would need this? Another caveat is that even though a book has a copyright date of pre-1985, it still may have been printed post-1985 and that info may not show up in the record in a consistent enough way to run an accurate report. Plus, how do we take into account the cross over between Junior Fiction and Young Adult? In any event, the only accurate way to determine the numbers is to physically go through the shelves and look. A nearly impossible task, at least for a small library with limited staff and slashed budgets. In any event, I have to track down the one person how may be able to query the database and get the info. I'll update this when I get better numbers.

Total library inventory: 34,668
Total est. juvenile inventory: 10, 601
Percentage of juvenile inventory: 31%

Estimate of inventory pre-1985: 75% or 7951 units

Now if we have to test pre-1985 inventory at $500/book: $3,975,375

Now, I am assuming we will have to do the certified laboratory testing for several reasons. The testing costs were not included in the yearly budget, so we would have to reopen it and appropriate funds to pay for it. It is a lengthy, messy process to add to the budget, so money realistically won't be available until Oct 1st, long after the certified lab testing goes into effect. Next, we would need to pay staff to go through all of the shelves and box up the books. Oh yeah, and pay for the boxes and ship them to a certified lab clear across the country. Did I mention this library is in rural Idaho? Shipping costs alone will kill us. The testing costs exceed the entire city budget, btw.

Another problem is that the certified laboratory testing will render most of the books down to toxic goo. So why even bother with the testing.

It is unlikely that the city will appropriate funds for testing. That leaves us with throwing out 75% of our juvenile section and replacing those books. We would still need to estimate close to $4 million dollars for replacement costs, if replacements can be found on all the titles. Plus we would need to pay staff to sort, box up/throw out books, buy replacements, and process them. And did I mention books are heavy. I would love to see a garbage truck pick up our trash can loaded up with books! Of course, if they are banned hazardous substances, we can't just throw them in the dumpster. We would need a hazardous materials removal specialist to do that....

And really, this starts to become silly. We don't regulate what books or audio visual materials a child can checkout. This brings our entire collection of 35,000 items under suspicion. What will the kids read while we are in the process of removing, testing, replacing thousands of books?

So our realistic choices are:
1. Shut down our children's section, or
2. Ban kids 12 and younger from the library.

Not so realistic considering how popular our library is with kids.

[open_sketchbook]

Destroying books, regardless of reason or content, is disgusting behaviour. I literately cannot think of any other word to explain how I feel about it. It's utterly reprehensible.

[Molyneux]

Destroying books, regardless of reason or content, is disgusting behaviour. I literately cannot think of any other word to explain how I feel about it. It's utterly reprehensible.

Did you...did either of you....even read this article? As disturbing as the idea of destroying books is to me, the reason behind it isn't censorship or prurience, it's because the books may contain chemicals that are harmful to children! Fuck's sake, if a book was written in cyanide ink, would you still be averse to that copy being destroyed?

[Mr Bean]

Destroying books, regardless of reason or content, is disgusting behaviour. I literately cannot think of any other word to explain how I feel about it. It's utterly reprehensible.

The reasoning is what we in the industry loving refer to as "Stupid Lawmaker syndrome" whereby a law or regulation is created and no one consults anyone who knows anything about the law or regulation they are passing.

The best part is the fact the law applies even to countries with perfect safety records. If this law had been targeted at say only countries which had a history of safety violations in the past decade(Sad to say that includes the US) then we'd not be in this position. If they had wrote an exception in for books we'd not be in this situation. But there again here we are.

[open_sketchbook]

Destroying books, regardless of reason or content, is disgusting behaviour. I literately cannot think of any other word to explain how I feel about it. It's utterly reprehensible.

Did you...did either of you....even read this article? As disturbing as the idea of destroying books is to me, the reason behind it isn't censorship or prurience, it's because the books may contain chemicals that are harmful to children! Fuck's sake, if a book was written in cyanide ink, would you still be averse to that copy being destroyed?

Because before 1985, the we were losing tens of thousands of children to book-related illnesses a year! It was terrible! Did you read the article? It says that not a single case, ever, can be linked to lead byproducts of ink. There is a big difference between smearing your walls in toxins and a small amount in text on paper!

[Beowulf]

Destroying books, regardless of reason or content, is disgusting behaviour. I literately cannot think of any other word to explain how I feel about it. It's utterly reprehensible.

Did you...did either of you....even read this article? As disturbing as the idea of destroying books is to me, the reason behind it isn't censorship or prurience, it's because the books may contain chemicals that are harmful to children! Fuck's sake, if a book was written in cyanide ink, would you still be averse to that copy being destroyed?

Are you retarded? Sure, they maybe contain materials that are harmful to children. The problem is that it's effectively impossible to test the books for those materials, since if you do so, you no longer have a book. This is also driving alot of small toymakers out of business, since they may make only a couple hundred of a given toy, and it costs $4000 for testing. Perfectly fine for a large toymaker, somewhat close to impossible for a single man shop.

[Vyraeth]

Did you...did either of you....even read this article? As disturbing as the idea of destroying books is to me, the reason behind it isn't censorship or prurience, it's because the books may contain chemicals that are harmful to children! Fuck's sake, if a book was written in cyanide ink, would you still be averse to that copy being destroyed?

It is interesting that you question the others about reading the article, considering:

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

Emphasis mine.

[Darth Wong]

Destroying books, regardless of reason or content, is disgusting behaviour. I literately cannot think of any other word to explain how I feel about it. It's utterly reprehensible.

Bullshit. The only reason it's such a bad thing to destroy books is that the act of book destruction has been historically linked to attempts to suppress certain ideas. If books are being destroyed for some reason other than ideological suppression, there is no reason to declare it an immoral practice.

For example, I've thrown out books that I found in old boxes in the garage, because they had black mould on them. Would you consider this an "utterly reprehensible" act? After all, you said that it doesn't matter why someone does it.

[Darth Wong]

Did you...did either of you....even read this article? As disturbing as the idea of destroying books is to me, the reason behind it isn't censorship or prurience, it's because the books may contain chemicals that are harmful to children! Fuck's sake, if a book was written in cyanide ink, would you still be averse to that copy being destroyed?

It is interesting that you question the others about reading the article, considering:

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

Emphasis mine.

Obviously, they're being paranoid about safety in this case. That doesn't change the fact that hopping up and down about the morality of it is nothing more than empty histrionics. At worst, it's an overzealous safety measure, not some horrendous invocation of Nazi book burnings.

[Coyote]

While I have to admit it sounds like overzealous application of "cooties syndrome" ("ZOMFG, this book was once in the same time zone as a piece of lead!") the thing to remember is that these books can always be re-printed again with modern non-lead applications.

Hell, if anything, it may provide a bit of a boost for publishers at some point, to reissue newer, 'safe' books.

[KrauserKrauser]

And who, pray tell, is going to have to pay for all of these newly printed books to replace the thousands upon thousands of books that this law requires replacement of?

Taxpayers? Just because the law was written poorly and completely idiotic in its requirements? Sounds like it would be cheaper just to pass a law to adjust this law.

[Simplicius]

And who, pray tell, is going to have to pay for all of these newly printed books to replace the thousands upon thousands of books that this law requires replacement of?

Taxpayers? Just because the law was written poorly and completely idiotic in its requirements? Sounds like it would be cheaper just to pass a law to adjust this law.

This is an important point, especially since vigorous enforcement of this provision of CPSIA will essentially wipe out all but the largest libraries. Public library collections budgets are small enough as-is, and in the current climate libraries are squeezed even further as endowments shrink.

The destruction of the public library system would be a social cost entirely disproportionate to the benefit of making sure that library collections are "safe" when no evidence exists that they were dangerous in the first place.

[Molyneux]

Did you...did either of you....even read this article? As disturbing as the idea of destroying books is to me, the reason behind it isn't censorship or prurience, it's because the books may contain chemicals that are harmful to children! Fuck's sake, if a book was written in cyanide ink, would you still be averse to that copy being destroyed?

It is interesting that you question the others about reading the article, considering:

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

Emphasis mine.

Obviously, they're being paranoid about safety in this case. That doesn't change the fact that hopping up and down about the morality of it is nothing more than empty histrionics. At worst, it's an overzealous safety measure, not some horrendous invocation of Nazi book burnings.

Thank you for getting what I was trying (and failing) to say across.