House votes 424-1 to ban lead in toys

WASHINGTON - Alarmed by a year of recalls targeting millions of tainted toys, the House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to ban lead and other dangerous chemicals from items such as jewelry and rubber ducks that could end up in children's mouths.

The legislation also would toughen rules for testing children's products and take steps to give more muscle to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which was criticized last year for its feeble handling of a flood of goods from China deemed hazardous to children.

"It should be a given that toys are not dangerous," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said in welcoming legislation that lawmakers and consumer groups lauded as one of the most far-reaching product-safety bills in decades.

The bill would impose the toughest lead standards in the world, banning lead beyond minute levels in products for children 12 or younger. It would also ban children's products - either permanently or pending further study - containing any of six types of phthalates, chemicals that are found in plastics and suspected of posing health risks.

The 424-1 vote - the lone dissenter was Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) - sends the measure to the Senate, which could approve it before Congress leaves for its August recess at the end of this week.

The White House has voiced opposition to parts of the legislation but has not threatened a veto.

The bill would require third-party testing for many children's products before they are marketed, a key change in monitoring practices after a year in which 45 million toys and children's products - 30 million from China - were recalled.

Those included lead-contaminated children's jewelry,

Spider-Man 3

flashing rings, and Halloween pails.

The bill would double the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to $136 million by 2014, and give it new authority to monitor testing procedures and impose civil penalties on violators. The CPSC was founded in 1973 with a staff of about 800. It now employs about half that number, while imports have vastly increased.

The bill also would boost whistle-blower protections to encourage people to report hazards to the CPSC and would direct the agency to set up a database where consumers, government agencies, child-care providers or doctors could report product-related injuries, illnesses or deaths.

Among other provisions, the bill requires the CPSC to adopt safety standards on all-terrain vehicles and to close a loophole in which cribs sold secondhand were not subject to the same standards as new cribs.