With the effective date nearing for a ban on lead in children’s products, many retailers and manufacturers want Congress to urge regulators to exempt certain products because final rules to implement the ban won’t be issued for months.

While staff from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued preliminary guidelines on Christmas Eve, the final rules will be not published for months. That lack of clarity, retailers say, will force them to discard questionable inventory at a time when they already are financially pinched.

Under a new product safety law enacted Aug. 14, a retroactive ban on lead in children’s products excludes certain components that are inaccessible to children, such as television circuits. However, even though the ban takes effect Feb. 10, the commission does not have to provide guidance on exactly what components are considered inaccessible until August 2009.

Without clear standards for sampling and testing products, a rush to comply with the new rules could mean that “perfectly safe, legal products will be scrapped,” said Paul Nathanson, adviser to a coalition of 35 retail and manufacturing associations and a principal at law and lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani. “Unless it is unsafe, it shouldn’t be haphazardly removed from sale.”

A petition now being circulated by the coalition states, “Action is urgently needed on a comprehensive rule on all aspects of the lead limits to provide clarity and minimize disruption to markets.”

The guidelines posted Dec. 24 are proposals that the CPSC must vote on by Jan. 5. The recommendations for defining “inaccessibility” state: “The staff would consider that an accessible component part of a children’s product is one that a child may touch, and an inaccessible component part is one that is located inside the product.”

Some manufacturers say this definition is too narrow.

The agency has not addressed situations where a child may be able to touch a component, but the lead in the item cannot be absorbed by the body in amounts that would pose a health risk, say members of a manufacturers’ coalition.