Within 24 hours this week, two different consumer watchdog groups gave the American public completely contradictory information about home lead test kits.
President George W. Bush's Consumer Product Safety Commission told us to throw away those untrustworthy kits, sit on our hands and blindly trust the government to protect our children from lead-covered toys being imported from China and other countries.
In contrast, the independent Consumer Reports announced that it had tested five kits and found three that worked. In addiction, these kits were reasonably inexpensive and easy to operate. Here's what CR wrote about the evaluation gear that costs as little as $8: "lead test kits are a useful though limited screening tool."
Here's what Bush's CPSC wrote, "Consumers should not use lead test kits to evaluate consumer products for potential lead hazards."
The CPSC's advice is clearly another case of "Plaming," which may be defined as Bush administration retribution for criticism of the administration.
For those unaware of Valerie Plame's ordeal, it went like this: question the Bush administration's saber-rattling propaganda about WMDs in Iraq; as her husband did, and you'll find yourself subjected to attack. In Plame's case, the retribution could have been fatal, as she was an undercover intelligence operative. Oh well, all's fair in politics and war mongering!
In the case of lead screening kits, many, including the United Steelworkers, have criticized the Bush administration's failure to manage trade policy in a way that protected North American workers from permanent job exports and the public from toxic product imports.
Bush's insistence on pursuing so-called "free trade" instead of fair trade has resulted in shipping millions of jobs overseas, so that now, fewer U.S. workers have manufacturing jobs than did in 1950.
And as we have seen this year, pet food, toothpaste and toys now manufactured in China and imported into the United States and Canada may be hazardous. So far, more than 30 million mostly Chinese-made toys have been recalled because of toxic levels of lead.
Many labor organizations have demanded that so-called "free trade" be replaced by fair trade, which would provide protections by enforcing international environmental standards and labor laws. Doing so would, among other things, prevent work by children, deforestation and uncontrolled air pollution accelerating the pace of global warming.
Paper imported into the United States from China might not be so cheap if the logs to make it weren't stolen from savaged Indonesian forests, the Chinese paper workers weren't pressed into service for long hours in dangerous conditions for less-than-living wages, and the Yangtze River weren't the recipient of untreated paper mill effluent.
Cheap paper, cheap toys, cheap pet food -- made under questionable circumstances -- all of this is what the Bush administration is protecting when it uses the CPSC to attack lead testing kits.
Don't fix the trade problem. Don't even make sure the questionable products are safe once they get here. Just shut the critics up.
And this is not the first time. Earlier this year, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) tried to stop the sale of vinyl lunchboxes after finding lead in the vinyl. After testing just 10 lunchboxes, the CPSC declared them safe and called the CEH Chicken Little.
CEH thought this was suspicious and demanded to see the CPSC test results. The agency refused. When the CPSC finally was forced to released the information, it revealed that the agency had tested only 10 lunchboxes, had found high levels of lead in three, then changed its testing methods -- apparently in an attempt to artificially minimize the threat to children.
In short, the CPSC was willing to endanger children in exchange for the continued import and sale of vinyl lunchboxes. Now the CPSC is willing to endanger children by telling parents not even to try using home lead testing kits to check toys and other imported consumer products. It's clear what's important to the Bush administration: Commerce. Not consumers. Not even children.
So, let's spell it out correctly. Under the Bush administration, the "C" in CPSC stands for Commerce: The Commerce Protection and Safety Commission.
The Congress, now controlled by Democrats, must take back this agency, properly fund it, and make it a Consumer Product Safety Commission once again, so that the American people can actually trust it when it says vinyl is safe and testing kits are faulty.
In the meantime, do we ignore the CSPC or ignore our children's health. Not much of a choice, is it?
(Consumer Reports says Homax Lead Check, Lead Check Household Lead Test Kit and Lead Inspector detected surface lead in toys, ceramic dishware and vinyl or plastic. The United Steelworkers "Get the Lead Out -- Stop Toxic Imports campaign has been using the Homax kit.)