A parent walks into a store to pick out a new toy for a three-year-old. He’s heard horror stories about toxins in common toys and wants to avoid unwittingly endangering his child, who is in the “try to swallow everything” phase.
He remembers the Health Department had put out a list of toys with bad chemicals and decides to check that the stuffed unicorn his daughter picked will be safe for her to play with.
He finally finds the list, comprising five ominous-looking spreadsheets organized by manufacturer name. He opens the first on his smartphone. The font is tiny. There’s thousands of products on it.
Although there’s a column next to each product listing chemicals like arsenic and bisphenol a, there’s no information about how much of the chemical is in each product or how great a health risk is posed. And there’s no easy way to search for a specific toy.
When lawmakers created this list in 2014, they envisioned it helping consumers better understand what was in the products they were buying their children.
As lawmakers once again consider upgrading how the state regulates chemicals in children’s products, VTDigger decided to see how helpful the list would be for the average parent in a toy store or kid’s clothing store.
The five spreadsheets contain 680,700 separate products reported by 142 different manufacturers. VTDigger tried to analyze what manufacturers and brands had reported the most products. Global Brands Group Holding Limited, a multi-billion dollar company that does brand management for household names like Mattel and Disney, had 213,574 unique product codes.
Vans, a shoe and clothing company, had 210,864 different product codes.
The “product model” section was too variable to analyze. In some cases, there were 12 digit universal product codes that can be looked up, but there were also vague descriptions, like “outerwear,” and five and seven digit codes that could not be so easily investigated.
“It’s a long way from where the legislators envisioned it in 2014,” said Paul Burns, executive director of VPIRG, in an interview Thursday.
Burns said that when the law was passed, the hope had been that the Health Department would eventually receive money to create a more user friendly interface, like an app, for consumers to lookup toys.
“But we still don’t have the level of data that would make that really possible,” he said.
Environmental and child advocates have been pushing for a bill this session, S.55, that they say would better protect kids from exposure to toxic chemicals. Industry representatives oppose the changes, saying they give the head of the Health Department too much authority and would complicate existing reporting requirements.
The debate this year mirrors the back and forth for the last two years over a similar piece of legislation that Gov. Phil Scott vetoed last session. The Senate bill seeks to update a law passed in 2014 which required manufacturers to notify the state starting in 2016 if their products contain one of 66 “chemicals of high concern” to children.
Last week, the House Human Services Committee had David Englander, senior legal advisor for the Health Department, in to explain the existing program. He showed skeptical lawmakers the process of searching for a particular teddy bear in the database.
Englander said during testimony that the department has “simply…not had the money to create a good, public-facing website.”
Rep. Jessica Brumsted, D- Shelburne, suggested that by creating an app, the state could make it easy for parents to see if a product contained toxic chemicals.
“Just having an app that would…be able to scan the barcode and then it would be able to tell you what are the things that are in here,” she said.
Rep. Francis McFaun, R-Barre Town, said that as not everyone has a smartphone, products should be labelled.
“(That way) I can find out just by picking up the toy,” said McFaun. “This is harmful or it isn’t.”
The program was supposed to be self-sufficient through the reporting fees manufacturers have to provide, he said. The $200 per chemical fee had brought in $182,600 during the two-year reporting period that ended last August, according to a legislative report. The department predicts it will be short $29,000-$34,000 for each of the next two years.
Under current Health Department rules, manufacturers are required to file biennial notices listing a brand name, product description and the name and amount of toxic chemicals.
S.55 would require them to also provide the product model and universal product code. The Health Department is already proposing to require manufacturers to report the universal product code and a product description containing the brand name and other product information under proposed rule updates.
No children’s product has been banned yet and there has been no labeling of products that contain chemicals dangerous to children, Englander said.
“So they’re bad for children and all they have to do is pay a fee?” said Brumsted.
Under current law, the health commissioner can add a chemical to the list if there is a “weight of credible, scientific evidence” that it is toxic and does not break down. The commissioner can also regulate the sale of children’s products containing a chemical of high concern upon the recommendation of a working group made up of scientists, advocates and industry representatives.
Under S.55, the weight of evidence standard would be replaced with a requirement that the commissioner use peer-reviewed scientific evidence when considering possible chemicals to place on the list. S.55 would also allow the commissioner to regulate the sale of children’s toys in consultation with, rather than on the recommendation of, the working group.
Bill Driscoll, vice president of the Associated Industries of Vermont, testified in front of the House Human Services Committee against the changes. He said the removal of the weight of evidence threshold means the health commissioner could pick and choose what studies to base a decision on.
Also, the bill removes a requirement that the commissioner must determine that there could be a health risk from the product before banning it, he said.
“You need to demonstrate that there is actually a serious health concern before you go around banning” products, said Driscoll.
Burns said that there was a lengthy rule-making process with ample opportunity for public comment before additional chemicals could be added to the list.
The weight of evidence standard has been used by the chemical industry at the federal level to stall action from the EPA and does not match what’s on the books in the three other states with similar laws, said Burns. Vermont’s law was intended to be “precautionary” when it comes to exposing children to potentially dangerous chemicals, he added.
“That is,”he said in written testimony, “that the law would tend to err on the side of protecting children and preventing harm.”
