The Bicycle Product Suppliers Association has petitioned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for more time to meet a third-party testing requirement established by a 2008 law citing a continued lack of certified third-party testing labs.
The CPSC already delayed enforcement of the provision once last December, but that stay is set to expire May 17. On April 1, BPSA petitioned CPSC for an additional one-year extension because of the continued lack of certified labs.
The deadline was set by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which set new testing standards for lead and other potentially harmful materials in childrens products in the wake of a public health scare prompted by news reports that toys, toothpaste, dry wall and other Chinese imports contained excessive levels of hazardous chemicals.
In April 2010, the situation is still inadequate, reads a letter accompanying the BPSAs petition. The CPSC website now lists four certified laboratories capable of performing some third-party testing for Part 1512 compliance, and only one laboratory is certified to test for compliance to the entire standard. Each of the other three is only partially accredited (meaning that one or more provision of Part 1512 is excluded from the accreditation. The only laboratory that appears to have unconditional accreditation received its approval approximately two weeks ago. Clearly the availability of only a single third-party laboratory to handle all of the requirements for the entire childrens bicycle sector is inadequate.
Part 1512 refers to the section of the federal code that regulates bicycles. The BPSA is urging the CPSC to postpone the third-party testing requirement until it can complete an already scheduled modernization of Part 1512 regulations to reflect current bicycle design. The regulation has not been substantially revised since 1976.
