The Tightwad

According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, on February 10, 2009, all clothing for children 12 and younger sold in the United States, have to be tested for lead and phthalates or they can’t be sold.  How will this affect the tightwad?  Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, thrift stores and resale shops will either pay to get their products privately tested or stop selling them.  Since most thrift shops and resale shops will not be able to afford this, they will probably stop selling used children’s clothes.  I’m also concerned that the cost of new clothes for children will also rise since I can’t imagine these companies now being forced to get their products tested, not passing the cost onto the consumer.  I have no idea how this will affect garage sales and whether or not it will be illegal to sell untested clothes in your garage sale or not.  If I find that information, I will pass it along to my readers.  I really hope this is not as bad as it seems.

I’m not saying something didn’t need to be done about the dangerous amounts of lead in some children’s products, but this law seems like a knee jerk reaction and I’m afraid its going to hurt a lot of people, especially poor people, and do a lot of harm to certain industries.  I would think there could be better ways of handling the situation like making all new clothes be tested and having a recall data base for used clothes.  Parents could use common sense because some clothes are going to be more likely than others to contain lead and phthalates.  Educate parents to know what to look for and have testing kits available in stores for if there is any doubt.

Here is the link to the Los Angeles Times store: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-thrift2-2009jan02,0,2083247.story  Here is the actual law, but be warned, it’s 62 pages long!!! http://www.cpsc.gov/cpsia.pdf  Here is a Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Product_Safety_Improvement_Act