2/10/2009 - Bend
by Matt McDonald
 
For the past month, Rick Rollefson, the owner of Kid's Paradise in Bend has heard one question again and again.
 
"Well, are you going to stay open," said Rollefson.
 
New lead laws that took affect on Tuesday make it illegal to sell children's items with lead content greater than six hundred parts per million. For a month, the discussion has been how to test for lead, particularly at stores that sell used items from thousands of brands.
 
But now...
 
"Consumer Product Safety Commission decided to exempt us from having to test," said Rollefson.
 
Still, any store can be fined for selling products that contain lead. For Rollefson that means setting up a safety center for customers, complete with a list of all the recalled products and announcements from the CPSC. But each store in town handles the requirement differently.
 
"It's over six to seven thousand parts per million of lead," said Chrissy Christoferson, Co-Owner of Stone Soup.
 
 
At Stone Soup, a consignment store, in Bend, they've rented an x-ray lead screener, saying it's made them return thirty percent of their inventory to it's original owners. But the scanner isn't cheap.
 
"We paid $1,500 to rent it for one week. to buy them is anywhere between we've been told anywhere from $35,000 to $45,000," said Christoferson.
 
And it's not just the cost, according to the CPSC, they are supposed to report any item containing too much lead, that means detailed notes and pictures of everything they test.
 
Non-profit thrift stores are affected too, Goodwill reported pulling more than five million pounds of toys from the shelves of their Oregon and Southwest Washington stores on Monday.
To read more on the new law visit: http://www.cpsc.gov/