Ban on books printed before 1985...

[irisheyes81]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032301764_pf.html

I just can not agree with this. I love old books; used book stores that sell old books are great.

Thoughts?

[KerryS]

AFAIK, the legislation has been postponed for at least a year.

ANd the legislation only applies to products marketed for children. It wouldn't apply to ALL books, just children's books.

[JudyJudyJudy]

"On the scale of concerns to have about lead, this is very clearly not a high priority," said Ellen Silbergeld, a MacArthur scholar and professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University who is considered one of the leading experts on lead poisoning.

"It doesn't take a tremendous amount of intelligence to figure out what the highest-risk sources of lead are," Silbergeld said. "This is a way of distracting attention from their failure to protect children from the clear and present dangers of lead. I think this is just absurd, and I think it's disingenuous." She said that toys, poorly made jewelry and other trinkets were cause for much more alarm.

Until more is known about this, I agree with Silbergeld.


Parents like Rachel Merrill are concerned, too. She home-schools her children and says that new books are just too expensive.
As a homeschooling parent, I don't find that I have to buy books that are nearly a quarter of a century old or older in order to be able to afford them. In many courses the material is outdated within just a few years or less anyway.

[irisheyes81]

From what I gathered from the article, it goes into effect in August, since the level drops from 600p/m to 300p/m. Even if they only include children's books, that is still a lot of books. Especially for libraries. According to the article, it will be quite expensive to have all books printed before 1985 tested, but without the tests they would face the loss of a lot of books.

Yes, I agree, Judy. I would not turn to outdated lesson books, unless it was to show the significant difference in a history book from 1950 compared to one of today. We bought a children's history book from the early 1900s (not for our kids, but as a gift for a history lover), but it sounds like that would become very expensive to do with the law including books.

[JudyJudyJudy]

We do a lot from a language arts book from the early 1900s, but I downloaded it from the internet, so this won't be an issue for that. Having said that, I have a lot of books, both for children and for adults, that were printed before 1985. Before my allergies got so bad, I used to love to collect old books.

[Crabbie]

Would you rather take the chance of exposing your child to lead?

[paper_]

Would you rather take the chance of exposing your child to lead?


Yes. I think regulation of new products in a sensible fashion makes sense, but not grandfathering in existing products is very wasteful.

[EvilAmy]

YOu know I can only come up with a smart assed reply.

It makes me wonder how the entire population all escaped brain damage from touching books while growing up.

[QuiltyConscience]

.I think it's a bit silly to pull all old books from the shelves. How many books would a kid have to eat to cause a problem?

And again, as with the kid's clothing, this would be practically impossible to monitor enough to bother making reselling illegal.

[QuiltyConscience]

The more I read about this whole mess, The more I think that it is really badly written, too open ended, and has caused way too much confusion.

[EvilAmy]

But it makes perfect sense to the gov't. Which to me screams to me bad idea.

[vulturemom]

I agree with quilty.

[RaisingThemLeft]

I think it's a bit ridiculous. These are books we all read as kids, and none of us ended up with lead poisoning. I think the bigger risk is the crap coming over from China in the form of plastic toys and other toys for small children, that they put in their mouths.

[paper_]

I think it's a bit ridiculous. These are books we all read as kids, and none of us ended up with lead poisoning. I think the bigger risk is the crap coming over from China in the form of plastic toys and other toys for small children, that they put in their mouths.

I wouldn't say that none of us got lead poisoning. Heck, a large portion of us might very well have. Most cases of lead posoning do not lead to death, rather they reduce the potential of a child by inhibiting brain growth. Extremely high levels of lead posoning can cause many other problems, but those are extremely rare in the US. A person continually exposed to moderately high levels of lead (compared to modern toxicity levels) can be perfectly normal, or even exceptionally bright - they just have a lower probability of accomplishing that.