Safer toys for our children.

By Congresswoman Darlene Hooley. Hooley represents Oregon's Fifth Congressional District.

Who could forget the number of toy and product recalls that headlined the news during the last holiday season? Many parents had to take away a child’s favorite toy or remove hoped-for items from their holiday shopping lists. Our children’s safety was being jeopardized as corners were cut by Chinese manufacturers and other importers, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) seemed both unwilling and unable to do its job.

Despite heel-dragging by the Bush Administration’s CPSC Chairman Nancy Nord, Congress acted swiftly to send landmark consumer protection legislation – the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 -- to the President, which he signed into law yesterday. As a result, the CPSC will now have the resources, authority, and oversight it needs to protect children from lead, dangerous toys, and other unsafe products.

The new law includes a personal victory for me as I retire from Congress at the beginning of 2009. I got my start in public service a few decades ago advocating for softer surfaces like bark dust under playground equipment after my son took a nasty tumble from the swings onto the concrete below, and I’ve been advocating for common-sense approaches to product safety ever since.

Recently, Senator Diane Feinstein and I teamed up to ban a number of dangerous chemicals, known as phthalates, from children’s toys and child care related products. Phthalates are chemicals added to common plastic products to make them soft and pliable. They are found in a variety of children’s toys and childcare products that children frequently put in their mouth, such as teethers, rubber ducks, and soft books. Phthalates interfere with the functioning of the hormone system, and have been linked to certain defects in reproductive organs. Young children are particularly vulnerable. But as a result of our efforts, manufacturers will have to use safer alternatives in children’s products.

This new law will help strengthen our ability to keep unsafe toys off American shelves in the first place, respond quickly when problems are found, and enforce violations of product safety laws. American parents want to know that the toys and other products they buy for their children are safe, and this law will help do just that.