Investigative Report: U.S. ships unsafe products
Since long before China furor, federal agency has OK'd exporting
goods banned in America.
By Russell Carollo - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, September 9, 2007
Ten days ago, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced
another in a series of well-publicized recalls of Chinese-made goods:
children's art sets containing crayons, markers, pastels, pencils,
water colors -- and lead -- distributed by Toys "R" Us.
"Consumers should immediately take the products away from children,"
warned a news release from the federal government's watchdog for
thousands of household items. "The CPSC is committed to protecting
consumers and families."
But 13 months earlier, in July 2006, the CPSC, without a press
release or corresponding media attention, authorized a Los Angeles
company to export to Venezuela 16,520 art sets that violated the same
CPSC standard protecting children from dangerous art supplies. The
following month, the agency authorized a Miami company to export to
Jamaica 5,184 sets of wax crayons that also violated the standard.
Though recalls coordinated by the CPSC of Chinese-made goods have
made headlines recently, for decades the federal agency has allowed
American-based companies to export products deemed unsafe here.
Those products can present an even greater danger in a country that
has only a handful of government employees devoted to consumer
protection, said R. David Pittle, a former acting CPSC chairman who
spent 22 years as a senior vice president for Consumers Union.
"If the United States doesn't have very many inspectors, how many do
you think there are in Honduras or Jamaica or Trinidad or Bulgaria?"
Pittle asked.
Using the CPSC's database of exports of non-approved products and
hundreds of pages of documents obtained through the federal Freedom
of Information Act, The Bee found that between October 1993 and
September 2006, the CPSC received 1,031 requests from companies to
export products the agency had found unsafe for American consumers.
The CPSC approved 991 of those requests, or 96 percent.
Agency spokesman Scott Wolfson said the CPSC is simply following
export notification law "as Congress spelled it out for us." But CPSC
Commissioner Thomas Moore strongly objected to the policy.
"Our agency, through our governing statues, cannot claim much moral
superiority over the Chinese, or any other foreign country, when it
comes to our own export policy," Moore said in a list of his
legislative proposals submitted to Congress in July. "Our export
policy is based on a desire to see U.S. manufacturers be able to
compete in foreign countries in terms of price and marketability, not
safety.
"... It is somewhat hypocritical of us to berate any other country
for not requiring their manufacturers to abide by the myriad U.S.
mandatory and voluntary product safety standards."
The CPSC database did not identify how many of the approved exports
were products made outside the United States that simply were
returned to their manufacturers and how many made here or elsewhere
were actually exported for sale in other countries. The data also
represent just a portion of all products violating CPSC standards
exported from the United States to other countries.
Under current law, companies have to seek CPSC approval when they
export products that violate mandatory standards or bans. But only
about 13 percent of CPSC standards are mandatory.
The agency is under a congressional mandate to first pursue voluntary
standards, which lack the force of law, and companies exporting
products that violate voluntary standards are not required to notify
CPSC before exporting.
The largest number of requests to the CPSC to export banned goods
came from California companies, which accounted for about one-third,
or 338, of the total during the period reviewed by The Bee. The vast
majority of the California requests came from the Los Angeles area.
One Stop Customs Brokers of Los Angeles, the company that applied to
ship the art materials to Venezuela for another Los Angeles company,
Kico Toys, told The Bee that the materials had landed in California
by mistake. Customs broker Randy Tang said officials with Kico Toys
told him the art sets should have gone directly from China to
Venezuela.
Days before the Kico Toys request, Tang's company applied to CPSC on
behalf of S H Toys Inc. of Los Angeles to ship 15,120 banned toy
trains, buses and other toys to the Caribbean. The CPSC agreed and
notified the Embassy of Grenada, but Tang said those toys never were
exported.
At S H Toys, a woman who identified herself as the owner and would
give only her first name, Lisa, said her company decided not to ship
the toys because of safety concerns. Incorporation documents identify
the company's owner/president as Lisa Tran.
At least 18 of the export requests reviewed by The Bee were from the
San Francisco Bay Area, and one company, All That Glitters, once
located on Second Street in San Francisco, accounted for eight of
those.
On April 12, 1996, a CPSC news release announced that All That
Glitters Inc. was the target of the government's first criminal
prosecution of corporate officers under the federal Flammable Fabrics
Act. The release said company owners David and Gail Daly had pleaded
guilty in U.S. District Court to a criminal charge of willfully
violating federal law and violating CPSC flammability safety
requirements.
The company was accused of selling chiffon skirts, blouses and
scarves that did not meet standards protecting the public from
"highly flammable wearing apparel," according to the release.
"Mr. and Mrs. Daly's willful misconduct placed consumers at risk from
serious burn injuries," then-CPSC Chairwoman Ann Brown was quoted as
saying. "These guilty pleas underscore our tough stance against any
individuals who ignore their safety obligations."
Still, before and after the Dalys' guilty pleas, the CPSC approved
four requests by All That Glitters to export scarves and other
clothing, which, according to CPSC, violated the same American
flammability standards. Letters seeking permission to export to
Romania, Brazil and Panama were signed by company owner David Daly.
The CPSC approved four other requests by the company in 1994 and
1995, but detailed records of those were not available.
Reached on Thursday, Gail Daly said she and her husband started
exporting the clothing after the CPSC investigation began in late
1994 or early 1995. The investigation, which eventually forced the
company to close in 1998, started when a disgruntled former employee
reported them, Daly said.
"That was why we were looking for other places to send them because
we couldn't sell them in the United States," she said. "I don't think
they (CPSC) care what goes to other countries."
CPSC approved one of the All That Glitters requests, to ship 693 of
the scarves from San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, just two
months before announcing the guilty pleas. It approved the export of
15,170 rayon chiffon dresses, skirts, blouses and scarves to Zona
Libre Colon, Panama, more than a year after it announced the pleas.
Shipment of 1,500 scarves and other pieces of clothing made in India
and bound for Bucharest, Romania, was approved in October 1995, and
two months later shipment of more than 20,000 scarves and pieces of
clothing was approved for Bahia, Brazil.
Among the 4 percent of export requests denied were several destined
for Canada or Mexico. CPSC records show that the agency was concerned
the banned products could cross the borders and re-enter the United
States and that the agency approves exports to Canada and Mexico only
when the products are being returned to the manufacturer.
"We're very concerned about them coming back over the border into the
country," said Wolfson, the CPSC spokesman.
On Sept. 7, 2005, Great Lakes Products Inc., of Indianapolis filed
two requests to ship products containing isobutyl nitrite, used as a
fragrance in such things as room odorizers. CPSC denied the shipment
to Canada, but approved the request to ship between 14,400 and 28,800
bottles of room odorant containing the same banned chemical to the
Czech Republic.
Isobutyl nitrite, used in inhalers known as "poppers" to enhance
sexual arousal, was banned in the United States in 1988 following
allegations of medical side effects, including the spread of AIDS.
Attorney Walt Sanders, a vice president for a Washington-area
lobbying firm who spoke on behalf of Great Lakes Products, said the
products were produced in the United States for export.
"If Great Lakes wants to sell these products to any country in the
world that will accept these products, they're free to do so, as long
as they don't sell them in the United States," Sanders said.
Consumer experts consider America's policy of exporting products it
doesn't want sold here bad public relations. But attempts to end the
practice have been met with resistance.
Pittle, the former CPSC acting chairman, said he tried unsuccessfully
to get the commission to prevent the export of non-approved products.
"To me it's like a no-brainer that the children of the consumers in
another country will feel the pain of a dangerous product just like
they would here in the United States, so I don't think it's OK to
dump this stuff in another country," said Pittle, who also served as
a CPSC commissioner from 1973 to 1982. "Small parts with toys that
can lodge in kids' throat. I think that's probably universal no
matter where you go. It's global."
Robert S. Alder, a legal adviser to CPSC commissioners and now a
professor of entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, suggested the agency's export policy could end up
harming American trade.
"Twenty-five years from now when Romania or some of these other
countries have really turned up their economies and they're sort of
looking to see where they want to do business," he said, "are they
really going to be that interested in doing business with a country
that was dumping stuff in their countries that would not have been
safe to sell in the United States?"
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/368866.html
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