Say goodbye to your favorite books ....

My friend Kristoff drew this to my attention via *******:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0212wo.html

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don’t conform. The law has hit thrift stores particularly hard, since many children’s products have long included lead-containing (if harmless) components: zippers, snaps, and clasps on garments and backpacks; skateboards, bicycles, and countless other products containing metal alloy; rhinestones and beads in decorations; and so forth. Combine this measure with a new ban (also retroactive) on playthings and child-care articles that contain plastic-softening chemicals known as phthalates, and suddenly tens of millions of commonly encountered children’s items have become unlawful to resell, presumably destined for landfills when their owners discard them. Penalties under the law are strict and can include $100,000 fines and prison time, regardless of whether any child is harmed.

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children. While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

At any rate, CPSIA’s major provisions went into effect on February 10. The day before, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published guidelines telling thrift stores, as well as other resellers and distributors of used goods, what they could safely keep selling and what they should consider rejecting or subjecting to (expensive) lead testing. Confirming earlier reports, the document advised that only “ordinary” children’s books (that is, made entirely of paper, with no toylike plastic or metal elements) printed after 1985 could be placed in the safe category. Older books were pointedly left off the safe list; the commission did allow an exception for vintage collectibles whose age, price, or rarity suggested that they would most likely be used by adult collectors, rather than given to children.

Since the law became effective the very next day, there was no time to waste in putting this advice into practice. A commenter at Etsy, the large handicrafts and vintage-goods site, observed how things worked at one store:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of children’s books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just can’t believe it! Every book they had on the shelves prior to 1985 was destroyed! I managed to grab a 1967 edition of “The Outsiders” from the top of the box, but so many!
People who deal in children’s books for a livelihood now face unpleasant choices. Valorie Jacobsen of Clinton, Wisconsin, who owns a small used-book store and has sold over the Internet since 1995, commented at my blog, Overlawyered: “Our bookstore is the sole means of income for our family, and we currently have over 7,000 books catalogued. In our children’s department, 35 percent of our picture books and 65 percent of our chapter books were printed before 1985.” Jacobsen has contacted the CPSC and her congressional representatives for guidance, but to no avail. “We cannot simply discard a wealth of our culture’s nineteenth and twentieth children’s literature over this,” she writes. She remains defiant, if wary: “I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I’d love to run a black market in quality children’s books—but at the same time it’s not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before.”

Jacobsen also worries that any temporary forbearance on the part of the CPSC, which has said that it does not plan a reseller crackdown any time soon in the absence of evidence of risk, could be abrogated without notice in the future. For one thing, new commissioners appointed by the Obama administration are expected to show less sympathy in regulating business than the current commission. In addition, the 50 state attorneys general have been empowered to enforce the law on their own, and frequently take much more aggressive legal positions than those of the federal government, sometimes teaming with private lawyers who capture a share of fines imposed.

Seizing on the “collectible” loophole, commenter Carol Baicker-McGee declared: “If nothing happens to change this law soon, I promise I will spend whatever money and devote whatever space I can to buying up these older books. I’ll be happy to label myself a collector (and I’m subversive enough to leave the books lying around where kids might ‘accidentally’ read them).” But this strategy, aside from its overtones of furtive evasion, will provide limited legal help to sellers. Under the law, they’re liable if their products will commonly be understood as intended for children’s use, even if not labeled as such.

A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards. The blogger Design Loft carefully examines some of the costs of CPSIA-proofing pre-1985 library holdings; they are, not surprisingly, utterly prohibitive. The American Library Association spent months warning about the law’s implications, but its concerns fell on deaf ears in Congress (which, in this week’s stimulus bill, refused to consider an amendment by Republican senator Jim DeMint to reform CPSIA). The ALA now apparently intends to take the position that the law does not apply to libraries unless it hears otherwise. One can hardly blame it for this stance, but it’s far from clear that it will prevail. For one thing, the law bans the “distribution” of forbidden items, whether or not for profit. In addition, most libraries regularly raise money through book sales, and will now need to consider excluding older children’s titles from those sales. One CPSC commissioner, Thomas Moore, has already called for libraries to “sequester” some undefinedly large fraction of pre-1985 books until more is known about their risks.

The threat to old books has surfaced so quickly in recent weeks that the elite press still seems unaware of it. The wider pattern of CPSIA’s disruptive irrationality and threat to small businesses has been covered reasonably well by the local press around the country. Some papers have investigated particular aspects of the law—the Los Angeles Times has tracked its menace to the garment industry, and the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal the general plight of thrift stores—but almost no one has cared to consider the law’s broad array of unintended consequences, let alone ask what went wrong in the near-unanimous rush to passage of this feel-good law.

The New York Times, which last year vigorously cheered the passage of CPSIA in both its news and editorial columns, occupies a class by itself in almost completely ignoring the law’s wrenching effects as its effective date has arrived. The Times used to cover the book business, as well as apparel, retailing, and product design, to name a few of the sectors hit hard by CPSIA. Yet the paper has remained entirely silent on the law in recent weeks, aside from one brief wire-service item and a post on the paper’s automotive blog, Wheels, about the law’s effect on children’s dirt bikes (now forced off the market). On Wednesday, the Times ran an editorial solemnly condemning “book banning”; on inspection, the editorial turned out to praise an ACLU lawsuit against a school district that had removed a library book from the shelves because of its allegedly over-favorable view of Castro’s Cuba. In any wider and more systematic prospect of book banning, the paper has shown no interest......

It makes me sick :(

that's not cool.

Seems to me this only effects editions printed before 85. Newer editions don't seem to be in any jeopardy.

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Originally Posted by Rockwulf

Seems to me this only effects editions printed before 85. Newer editions don't seem to be in any jeopardy.

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A lot of older books aren't in print anymore and are very valuable to collectors. A first edition Dr. Seuss book for example can sell for thousands of dollars and all those were printed way before the 1980's.

Opps, nevermind. I just reread the article and it says there is an exception for collectibles. This does still fuck over small business owners and thrift stores who have to destroy potentially large portions of their inventory.

snopes?

Snopes

I wouldn't buy a used childrens book

It does make me wonder if biography of a grizzley is considered a childrens book in this day and age

Ya know - what's scary is not the books... it's what's gonna happen to all the old vinyl pre-1985? PVC is just as shunned upon these days as lead. Combine that with all the lead used in the printing and the mold that grows on the tattered edges and I'm surprised these things weren't banned decades ago.

/me rushes out to covet more 'rare' vinyl to the horrors of the misses.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DJ Bat

Ya know - what's scary is not the books... it's what's gonna happen to all the old vinyl pre-1985? PVC is just as shunned upon these days as lead. Combine that with all the lead used in the printing and the mold that grows on the tattered edges and I'm surprised these things weren't banned decades ago.

/me rushes out to covet more 'rare' vinyl to the horrors of the misses.

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Shut up! Don't give them any ideas.

funny thing is, if you think about it, if all the multitudes of things are they say are bad are really worth being that concerned about then the global population should be a lot smaller

i can name about 100 books off the top of my head that went OUT OF PRINT before 1985, meaning the only way to get a hold of these books is to purchase the rare copy from a thrift shop or other second hand dealer. I am already a collector of my favourite books with their original covers, many of which pre-date my birthday in 1983.

I do NOT like the concept of making books, information and entertainment, illegal. There will be a black market for books, they created it. This will make people who read into criminals.

On the other hand, this makes my personal library's value SKY
ROCKET. Hell ONE shelf of my books would now probably put a child through school, just based on doubling, nothing else, just doubling the worth of each book. Between my Grimm Fairy Tales, Mother Goose, and Nancy Drew I could pay off my debts.

~K

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Originally Posted by Mr Karl

funny thing is, if you think about it, if all the multitudes of things are they say are bad are really worth being that concerned about then the global population should be a lot smaller

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No shit, we all most of us grew up with lead everything,and we're not dead...lead shmead...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DJ Bat

Ya know - what's scary is not the books... it's what's gonna happen to all the old vinyl pre-1985? PVC is just as shunned upon these days as lead. Combine that with all the lead used in the printing and the mold that grows on the tattered edges and I'm surprised these things weren't banned decades ago.

/me rushes out to covet more 'rare' vinyl to the horrors of the misses.

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i miss my records:(, i had over 1000 but my stupid ex took em all...jerk
i was so proud

Well perhaps relish in the thought of the hernia your ex probably has in lugging those things around... I dumped about 500 of mine (Have about 400 left). Some I am rabidly proud of and I feature one of my favorite in my first CyberDen radio show over at http://www.cyberden.com/ - It's Music From Mathematics - some of the first 'computer music' ever and some of it is where nightmares come from.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr Karl

funny thing is, if you think about it, if all the multitudes of things are they say are bad are really worth being that concerned about then the global population should be a lot smaller

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That was my point too. Kids seemed to survive it this far ....

Yeah, not only did I grow up with that stuff, but half my job involves soldering, often in areas with little ventilation, thus inhaling fumes of lead and tin. I'm sort of fine I think.

I'm SO glad that this turned out to be false claim.

I'm a antique book collector. I also have tons of new books as well. I also had like at least 200 (none antique) that I left at my mom's. When my sis leave, she'd have a small library.

So if this rumor was true, I'd be cleaning out my saving account and make some huge loans and sell off whatever I think I wont need for next couple months, and list goes on. I'd have blew it all on books. Especially some of books I used to have as a child that I haven't got yet.

Then I'd trade them for other books that I wants. Especially some of child book from early 1900's, medical books from 1800's, Jule Verne's first edition, etc... . I had one child book from like 1920's some of stuff in that is unbelievable political incorrect which make it so funny. If anyone is interested, I may can scan this one short story that is like 10 pages long (pics take up most space) and scan it and post it here.

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Originally Posted by Deadly Envy

I'm SO glad that this turned out to be false claim.

I'm a antique book collector. I also have tons of new books as well. I also had like at least 200 (none antique) that I left at my mom's. When my sis leave, she'd have a small library.

So if this rumor was true, I'd be cleaning out my saving account and make some huge loans and sell off whatever I think I wont need for next couple months, and list goes on. I'd have blew it all on books. Especially some of books I used to have as a child that I haven't got yet.

Then I'd trade them for other books that I wants. Especially some of child book from early 1900's, medical books from 1800's, Jule Verne's first edition, etc... . I had one child book from like 1920's some of stuff in that is unbelievable political incorrect which make it so funny. If anyone is interested, I may can scan this one short story that is like 10 pages long (pics take up most space) and scan it and post it here.

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Okay man, I gotta ask. It's been a few days and I thought at first that maybe you were drunk or something, so I let it go. But what's up with your typing style. I know you mentioned that you were deaf, so I tried to factor that in, but now that I know that you're probably sober and a reader to boot, I gotta know. Is English your third or forth language? I'm not trying to insult you here but I'm genuinely curious because every time I read one of your posts my brain melts a little.

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Originally Posted by Rockwulf

Okay man, I gotta ask. It's been a few days and I thought at first that maybe you were drunk or something, so I let it go. But what's up with your typing style. I know you mentioned that you were deaf, so I tried to factor that in, but now that I know that you're probably sober and a reader to boot, I gotta know. Is English your third or forth language? I'm not trying to insult you here but I'm genuinely curious because every time I read one of your posts my brain melts a little.

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The grammar for sign language is not the same as the grammar for english. So for deaf people english is a second language. Not to answer the question for him but if he already said he's deaf then it seems like he already answered your question.

I just ate my 70's copy of "Sam, I am" two weeks ago, so I too am glad it was a false claim.

What about a those games kids play today? Nobody cares about that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rockwulf

Okay man, I gotta ask. It's been a few days and I thought at first that maybe you were drunk or something, so I let it go. But what's up with your typing style. I know you mentioned that you were deaf, so I tried to factor that in, but now that I know that you're probably sober and a reader to boot, I gotta know. Is English your third or forth language? I'm not trying to insult you here but I'm genuinely curious because every time I read one of your posts my brain melts a little.

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It is combines of few things. Being deaf had part to do with that. Sign language being first language is the biggest reason. There's no tense, everything is say as singular, no commas or punctuation and there's no really right or wrong way to organize the words.
Then on top of that, American Sign Language was developed by a French man. If I was to try communications with deaf people from England or Australia (where they use English signing language), we'd be unable to communication with each other by signing. On other hand, if I was to bumps into deaf people from France, we'd be able to understand each other pretty well.

Here's an example, in English, if you wants to say "I'm going to the store. I'll be back by noon" In American Sign Language, it'd be signed like this
"I/me go store back noon"
In fact if you take a look at some deaf forum or read some of deaf people writing, you’d see vary skill of writing. I really don’t want to say this but… My writing skill is actually amazing compare to many deaf people.
Part of this was because I was mainstreamed my whole life. I rarely was in class with other deaf student. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if I didn’t mainstreamed.

Other things that affect me was my parents had a custody war over me. I was getting pulled out of school for months repeatedly. Also I had to change school every time I end up with either of my parent. I missed most of my fourth and fifth grade, and at least half of the time I wasn't in middle school. So by the time I got into high school, I had to dodges English class and take classes that would make up for English credit such as creativity writing and other things. I did this so I can get the credits I need to graduate.

Thanks for bring this up. I used to think people were just being a grammar Nazis, but now I realize I have to do some serious work on my English. I appreciate it. I'll try my best to to be more careful. Even if it mean spending 20 mins on each post and typing on Microsoft word.


Here's some links if you wants to read more this subject:

http://www.4hearingloss.com/archives...dults_hav.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...7/ai_n28601666 (LONG)

http://books.google.com/books?id=7-X...sult#PPA222,M1

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deadly Envy

It is combines of few things. Being deaf had part to do with that. Sign language being first language is the biggest reason. There's no tense, everything is say as singular, no commas or punctuation and there's no really right or wrong way to organize the words.
Then on top of that, American Sign Language was developed by a French man. If I was to try communications with deaf people from England or Australia (where they use English signing language), we'd be unable to communication with each other by signing. On other hand, if I was to bumps into deaf people from France, we'd be able to understand each other pretty well.

Here's an example, in English, if you wants to say "I'm going to the store. I'll be back by noon" In American Sign Language, it'd be signed like this
"I/me go store back noon"
In fact if you take a look at some deaf forum or read some of deaf people writing, you’d see vary skill of writing. I really don’t want to say this but… My writing skill is actually amazing compare to many deaf people.
Part of this was because I was mainstreamed my whole life. I rarely was in class with other deaf student. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if I didn’t mainstreamed.

Other things that affect me was my parents had a custody war over me. I was getting pulled out of school for months repeatedly. Also I had to change school every time I end up with either of my parent. I missed most of my fourth and fifth grade, and at least half of the time I wasn't in middle school. So by the time I got into high school, I had to dodges English class and take classes that would make up for English credit such as creativity writing and other things. I did this so I can get the credits I need to graduate.

Thanks for bring this up. I used to think people were just being a grammar Nazis, but now I realize I have to do some serious work on my English. I appreciate it. I'll try my best to to be more careful. Even if it mean spending 20 mins on each post and typing on Microsoft word.


Here's some links if you wants to read more this subject:

http://www.4hearingloss.com/archives...dults_hav.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...7/ai_n28601666 (LONG)

http://books.google.com/books?id=7-X...sult#PPA222,M1

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Fuck that 20 minutes on a post thing. Life's too short. We understand what you're typing. It's not really confusing. More just like on a lower grade level to a point. Keep on, keeping on. Forum's should be about entertaining yourself. Not work.

Cool, thanks for explaining it. I'll have to keep my inner-nazi in check.

Thanks both of you.

Yeah I know my English sucks. I was not sure if it was confusing or not. But I'm glad others can understand me.

On other hand, I know my English need to get better. So I will have to be more mindful when I type. But yeah this forum is suppose to be entertainiment, not work. So I'll just try to be more careful but not go through long process of checking everything.

Thanks Rockwulf. I appreciate your understand.


Let not hijack this thread. So... Tomorrow I'll try to scans this political incorrect story from old child book I own and posts it.

This is my all time favorite kids book. From 1967... I can't believe it sells for $50-$100+ - lol -

This was one of the stories in it. Enjoy. Sorry the scans aren't large - I posted this back when the web / screen standard was like what... 640 x 480... yea, loliknow.


http://www.cyberden.com/bat/GWOT/Cover.gif