Rhinestone biz takes dim view of safety bill

A consumer product safety law is taking some of the sparkle out of rhinestone jewelry industry, which wants Congress to bring back the bling.

Last week federal regulators denied the Fashion Jewelry Trade Association’s request for an exemption to the Consumer Products Safety Improvements Act.  Congress passed the act in 2008 to add teeth to consumer safeguards, including a ban on the sale of most products that contain lead to children, following several highly publicized toy recalls.

{mosads}But several manufacturing and retail groups have complained that the law is too inflexible and has blocked the sale of products that are safe. Ingested, lead can severely impair a child’s development.

The fashion jewelry trade group said it was seeking a “bling exemption” to the new law. FJTA represents retailers and distributors of rhinestones, sterling silver, and cubic zirconia jewelry, and not diamonds and other gems sold by the fine jewelry industry.

The act has hurt sales of crystal rhinestones, which are put on a variety of children’s products, from clothes, to shoes, to cell phone covers to backpacks, said Michael Gale, the association’s executive director.

A letter to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), which is responsible for implementing the new standard, listed 12 reports of retailers sending back products with rhinestones for fear of running afoul of the new law.

Gale said the industry believes that crystal rhinestones are safe. Lead is embedded in the molecular structure of the rhinestones but is not easily transferable to the human body, Gale said.

“Even if you have it in stomach acids for weeks it does not come out,” he said.

Although staff also found that the rhinestones did not pose a serious health risk to children, CPSC Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum, a Democrat, said the law wasn’t flexible on this score: it blocks products that could lead to the absorption of any lead in children.

The inflexibility of the law has been a sore point for children’s apparel companies to all-terrain vehicle manufacturers and retailers and other businesses.

Ed Krenik, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani working with apparel companies and ATV manufacturers to change the law, says 11 bills have been introduced in Congress seeking specific exemptions. Gale said the association has met with lawmakers and staff but haven’t received any commitments to push for a legislative fix.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee postponed a scheduled hearing on the consumer product safety act last week until September to give it more time to address healthcare reform.

Meanwhile, some fashion jewelry retailers and apparel companies are replacing crystal rhinestones with plastic ones, which are lead free. But the solution is an imperfect one, the industry claims.

“There is the loss of the ‘bling’ factor. … Consumers don’t like it as well,” said Sheila Millar, a partner at Keller and Heckman, which represents the fashion jewelry trade group.