It's a vacation edition of the Friday Freakout, just one item:
Congress passed a ban on lead in toys with a strong, veto-proof margin. The bill also includes a ban on phthalates in children's products, and it has a bunch of provisions relating to strengthening the CPSC that sound a lot like the big CPSC bill last Spring. Not clear what that's about.
The votes were 89-3 in the Senate and 424-1 in the House. So who the hell voted against banning lead in children's toys? Well, Ron Paul [R-TX] was the lone gunman in the House, and Tom Coburn [R-OK], Jim DeMint [R-SC] and Jon Kyl [R-AZ] voted against in the Senate. DeMint had carried a lot of industry water during the CPSC debate, so maybe that's not surprising. [Both Obama and McCain were absent and did not vote.]
Meanwhile, some Washington parents are determined not to let something like a ban get in the way of their continued freaking out. ""In the past six months, I started freaking out about the BPA stuff and plastic toys," said one in the Washington Post. "Am I being neurotic, or is it really not safe? It just gets compounded, because everything is plastic and made in China. You end up worrying about lead paint, plastics, all these things our parents never worried about."
Congress sends Bush bill banning lead in toys [ap.google.com]
Despite Additive Ban, Some Parents Voice Worry [washpost]
1 Comment
Ron Paul proving for about the 789th time that he is, in fact, completely bat-shit crazy. We need more physicians against banning lead. Maybe his plan is to dump all the toys with lead on the border to kill all the "illegals".
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