ACTION ALERT!
Bush Nominates Industry Crony for Top Consumer Safety Position
Senate Nomination Hearing set for May 10, 2007
Write your Senator!!!
The Consumer Product Safety Commissioner (CPSC) currently is operating without a third Commissioner and President Bush has officially nominated Michael Baroody for this significant leadership role. Baroody is currently head of the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group that has long opposed product safety regulation and pollution prevention laws, and that according to consumer groups has called for weakening CPSC. CEH is urging Senators to reject this nomination of a industry leader whose record shows a commitment to weakening safety regulation for industry. The CPSC desperately needs a Chair who is an advocate for children’s health and consumer protection who can turn the struggling agency around. To urge your Senator to reject this nomination, click here.
Read on to learn about why the new Chairman for the CPSC is so important to our health and the safety of our families:
CPSC-Out to Lunch on Lead Risks to Kids
In the summer of 2005, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH, www.cehca.org) made national news by revealing lab testing that showed high levels of lead in many common vinyl children's lunchboxes. The Center pursued legal action to eliminate this unnecessary lead risk to children, the Food and Drug Administration warned lunchbox makers to address the problem, and state Attorneys Generals from across the country ordered vinyl lunchbox recalls.
Yet despite the clear danger to children, the federal government's leading consumer protection agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) downplayed the problem. Despite its own tests showing high levels of lead in lunchboxes, CPSC told parents that lunchboxes did not pose a lead threat to children. Even worse, after finding several lunchboxes with high lead levels, CPSC changed its test method, in an apparent attempt to find artificially lower lead levels.
According to CPSC internal documents obtained by CEH, the agency announced vinyl lunchboxes were safe after having conducted tests on fewer than ten lunchboxes and even in those few tests, the agency scientists found several lunchboxes containing 2-16 times more lead than the legal limit for lead in paint.
CEH has a ten-year track record of protecting children from hidden lead risks in consumer products. In addition to vinyl lunchboxes, the organization's legal action and advocacy has eliminated lead risks to infants and children in baby powders, children's medicines, imported candies, and metal and vinyl jewelry. In each of these cases, CPSC has been far behind the public health and children's advocacy communities in pushing for changes to protect children's health.
Take Action Here!
Join us in urging your Senator to help install new leadership for real consumer protection!
Find your Senator's contact information here and email or send a letter today:
If your Senator is a member of the US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee (find out here), they will be in charge of reviewing and voting on White House nominations, and especially need to hear from you!!
sample letter:
Dear Senator ____________________,
As a constituent, I urge you to take action to insure strong consumer protection for my family. I am deeply concerned about President Bush's nomination of Michael Baroody
for the top seat of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Baroody is currently head of the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group that has long opposed product safety regulation and pollution prevention laws, and that according to consumer groups has called for weakening CPSC. During his tenure at NAM, Baroody has been at the forefront of opposition to laws that protect children and the public from unsafe products and toxic health threats, including:
• In 2000, when manufacturers covered up their knowledge of tire problems that led to the deaths or injuries of over 500 people in car accidents, NAM opposed legislation requiring manufacturers to provide the government with accident data that they previously withheld. Regarding NAM’s lobbying, the bill’s sponsor Senator John McCain said, “The fix is in from the special interests.”
• In 2001, Baroody decried a Supreme Court ruling that upheld EPA's authority to regulate toxic air emissions, a decision that upheld laws that save tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health costs by reducing air pollution;
• Baroody later welcomed new Bush Admin rules that relaxed pollution prevention laws for power plants;
• In 2003, NAM opposed protections from asbestos exposure and teamed with the asbestos industry to lobby Congress in opposition to proposed regulations;
• NAM is a leader in the polluter-backed junk science campaign to deny global warming; their official position states that science has “not confirmed evidence of global warming that can be attributed to human activities.”
Consumer groups are also concerned about Baroody’s record and have called on the Senate to closely scrutinize his appointment. Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine has stated that “When it comes to safety regulation, NAM has traditionally pushed for a hands-off approach.”
This nomination come on the heels of revelations that the Consumer Product Safety Commission failed to protect children from lead poisoning threats posed by vinyl lunchboxes. This unnecessary lead risk to children could have been more easily remedied if CPSC had not manipulated and ignored its own test data showing high lead levels in lunchboxes.
Since the CPSC is currently without a third Commissioner who will steer the agency as Chair, Congress has a chance to help turn the agency around. The CPSC Chair must make the health of our nation a priority, and not shy away from pushing industry to make changes necessary to reach this goal of consumer safety. Michael Baroody, a proven adversary of safety and health regulation with strong ties to the industry he would have authority over as Chair of the CPSC is not the person guide this troubled agency.
I urge you to please reject this dangerous nomination,
Sincerely,
name, address
city, state, zip
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