Cosumer Product Safety Commission - Protecting Children?

In case you haven't already heard, a new federal law will go into effect February 10, 2009. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in intended to protect our children from lead and phthalates - a laudable goal, right? Actually it seems rather than protecting children from dangerous chemicals, it will serve to squash small businesses, stifle entrepreneurship, and possibly even close your local library to children.
How so?
The new law requires all makers and sellers (or distributers) of any products marketed to children under 12 to have their products tested to ensure they do not have lead levels that exceed 600 parts per million, and they must not contain more than 0.1% phthalates. Lead is linked with decreased IQ as well as other health problems, and phthalates are endocrine disrupters because the body recognizes them as hormones. Certainly, parents and toy makers alike would do good to keep these "out of the mouths of babes."
The new law seems as though it will only create more red tape and expense rather than making it easier for parents to choose safe toys for their children. The recent recalls for leaded toys have not been over hand made wooden toys that stay at home moms make during their children's naps times or for diapers or slings sewn by hard-working mothers so that they can stay home with their children and contribute to their household incomes. Nor have they been for books, but these items are all covered by the new law along with the cheap, plastic, made-in-China toys that are actually problematic.
The CPSC issued a memo that suggests that people will still be able ot buy and sell used items as long as they do not contain lead and have not been recalled, but they have yet to issue a ruling on what to do about libraries - if they will be able to continue to allow children under 12. They are in library limbo, and may not be able to continue to distribute untested books to children unless the CPSC rules otherwise.
While large manufacturers will be able to absorb the costs and invariably pass them on to their consumers, small-scale operations will either have to operate inviolation of the letter of the law- though certianly not the spirit of it if, indeed, the spirit of the law was to make toys safer. This latest bow to the almihgty god, Safety, is not unlike efforts to make uniform safety reglations for foods. Just as I have a membership card that allows me to purhase underground milk, cream, and other dangerous goods, we may one day find ourselves going to underground libraries or secretively meeting knitters in back allies to buy contraband booties with matching hats. Whoever thought these would be acts of civil disobedience?