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Ah. Part Two of the sensationalist hatchet job has gone up, and it's no better than the first. Witness it for yourself at http://www.kirotv.com/investigations/19306641/detail.html.
So, let's get to shredding, shall we? First, let's look at the headline: "Study Showing No Lead In Books Mostly Done In China". If there hadn't been regular scares of unsafe material from China, the latest being the melamine-in-formula scandal, that headline wouldn't do anything for them. But already, it's supposed to discredit anything said about the safety of books, because the tests were performed in China! Or Hong Kong! And the books are all mostly new, so that doesn't mean anything. Because "everyone knows" libraries don't regularly weed out their old stock and buy new printings of old material, so we all have dusty tomes made in the 1900s sitting right along side our lead-filled children's books. You know why the used and antique market is expensive? Because not all that many books last that long. Through simple attrition, odds are good that there aren't all that many books that could be dangerous in your library or bookstore. The local affiliate makes it sound like you could go into any library, pick a kids book at random, and there would be a good chance of finding a book with toxic lead levels. Sure, the chance is nonzero, but there are a lot of zeros after that decimal point before any other digits start showing up.
"Libraries confused over new lead standards" - What standards, precisely, are you talking about? The as-yet-nonexistent guidelines as to how to test and determine whether one's materials are within the lead limit? Those standards? Georgia Lomax is behaving intelligently - pulling all the books off the shelves until the standards materialize and then they go through the laborious testing process would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. Not only that, it would severely piss off the users of the library that come to get children's books. So when they resolve the matter and give us guidelines, we'll work on it. Not until. And even then, it would be easier to give books a blanket exemption if the component parts thereof pass muster on lead content.
*sigh* What they should be reporting on is the fact that the CPSC still hasn't come up with anything resembling coherent testing facilities, standards, or anything else. Instead, it's more "your children are in danger and the evul libraries aren't doing anything about it! You can pity them because they're too confused and stupid to know what the government was talking about, or you can be angry that they're not protectiong your children, like we are!"
Head, PIKE. And ne'er shall the two be parted again.
So, let's get to shredding, shall we? First, let's look at the headline: "Study Showing No Lead In Books Mostly Done In China". If there hadn't been regular scares of unsafe material from China, the latest being the melamine-in-formula scandal, that headline wouldn't do anything for them. But already, it's supposed to discredit anything said about the safety of books, because the tests were performed in China! Or Hong Kong! And the books are all mostly new, so that doesn't mean anything. Because "everyone knows" libraries don't regularly weed out their old stock and buy new printings of old material, so we all have dusty tomes made in the 1900s sitting right along side our lead-filled children's books. You know why the used and antique market is expensive? Because not all that many books last that long. Through simple attrition, odds are good that there aren't all that many books that could be dangerous in your library or bookstore. The local affiliate makes it sound like you could go into any library, pick a kids book at random, and there would be a good chance of finding a book with toxic lead levels. Sure, the chance is nonzero, but there are a lot of zeros after that decimal point before any other digits start showing up.
"Libraries confused over new lead standards" - What standards, precisely, are you talking about? The as-yet-nonexistent guidelines as to how to test and determine whether one's materials are within the lead limit? Those standards? Georgia Lomax is behaving intelligently - pulling all the books off the shelves until the standards materialize and then they go through the laborious testing process would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. Not only that, it would severely piss off the users of the library that come to get children's books. So when they resolve the matter and give us guidelines, we'll work on it. Not until. And even then, it would be easier to give books a blanket exemption if the component parts thereof pass muster on lead content.
*sigh* What they should be reporting on is the fact that the CPSC still hasn't come up with anything resembling coherent testing facilities, standards, or anything else. Instead, it's more "your children are in danger and the evul libraries aren't doing anything about it! You can pity them because they're too confused and stupid to know what the government was talking about, or you can be angry that they're not protectiong your children, like we are!"
Head, PIKE. And ne'er shall the two be parted again.
