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Bills to combat lead advance

QUOTE “This bill puts the burden on manufacturers to meet our standards.”

Rep. Sharon Treat, D-Farmingdale

Pull quote, please.

AUGUSTA – Children in Maine would be better protected from the toxic dangers of lead in toys and other products under the provisions of two bills that won unanimous ought-to-pass support on Friday from the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

One bill would empower the state to prohibit the sale of children’s products that contain lead and to penalize retailers and manufacturers that persist in making such products available.

The other would ramp up blood-screening efforts for toddlers who live in high-risk areas with older homes – including Bangor – in an attempt to identify those who are being exposed to deteriorating lead paint in their homes, day care programs and other environments.

The toxic toy bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Jill Conover D-Oakland, said she was prompted to submit the legislation after her young son’s favorite toy, Thomas the Tank Engine, was recalled last year because of unacceptable lead content.

Exposure to lead during the prenatal period, infancy and childhood is associated with lowered intelligence, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, lack of physical coordination and other neurological damage. At very high levels, it can cause mental retardation, coma and death.

“This bill puts the burden on manufacturers to meet our standards,” said Rep. Sharon Treat, D-Farmingdale, co-sponsor of the toxic toys measure. While Congress is making headway in tightening up the testing of consumer products, including toys, Treat said, it could take years before new federal standards take effect. In the meantime, she said, states must take action to protect children.

Governmental agencies and private organizations test many products for safety, but most product recalls are voluntary. Consumer advocates say that’s because federal guidelines for lead and other toxic materials haven’t changed in many years, despite growing evidence that they fail to protect the public.

According to Mike Belliveau of the Maine-based nonprofit Environmental Health Strategy Center, the acceptable federal standard for lead paint, 600 parts per million, hasn’t changed since it was established in 1978, even though scientists and health officials now agree that there is no safe level, especially for pregnant women and young children.

For products with lead content other than paint, such as the lead used to make vending-machine trinkets and added as a stabilizer to vinyl bathtub toys, there is no federal standard, Belliveau said. Some samples of the popular “rubber duckie” tub toy tested for lead at a recent State House event contained 1,700 ppm, he said. Such products are currently perfectly legal to sell but would be prohibited in Maine if the bill is approved by the Legislature.

The committee members voted Friday to adopt 40 ppm, a recent recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics, as the maximum allowable lead contained within products for children sold in Maine.

They agreed to enforce the recall of any product for children that has a painted surface containing more than the current federal standard of 600 ppm and to adjust that standard down as the federal rule changes in response to congressional action.

Maine retailers who knowingly keep on their shelves toys and other products with lead levels higher than those adopted could be fined up to $50,000 under the proposed law. Manufacturers could also be penalized. Enforcement would be carried out by the Office of the Maine Attorney General.

Antique toys and collectibles not intended for use by children would be exempt, as would items sold at yard sales and other informal venues.

The second measure endorsed by committee members on Friday aims to improve testing rates for lead in the blood of 1- and 2-year-olds in five Maine communities: Sanford, Biddeford-Saco, Portland, Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor.

According to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, those communities have the highest rate of childhood lead paint poisoning, largely due to deteriorating paint in older homes and apartment buildings.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Gary Connor, D-Kennebunk, amended his original proposal, which would have mandated annual blood tests for all Maine children and barred them from entering school if they had not been tested. The version approved on Friday has a goal of testing every child in the high-risk communities between the ages of 1 and 2. School entry would not be affected.

Dr. Dora Anne Mills, director of the Maine CDC, said screening rates in Maine have improved over the past 10 years, while heightened public awareness of the problem of lead paint in older buildings has reduced the number of cases of childhood lead paint poisoning from more than 500 cases a year to about 250.

Mills said the most important intervention is to educate the public about the dangers of living in older homes, including teaching “lead-safe” renovation methods.

The two lead bills now move to the full Legislature for floor votes in the House and Senate.

More information on toy safety and recalls of products for children can be found online at www.healthytoys.org.

mhaskell@bangordailynews.net

990-8291