What CPSIA and Prop 65 Actually Require of Imported Home Decor

Most first orders out of China do not fail on price or on quality. They fail because somebody assumed the factory was handling compliance, and the factory assumed the importer was.

This is a plain-English summary of the two rules that come up on almost every seasonal home and garden decor programme going into the United States. It is not legal advice — your customs broker and your own counsel are the people who sign off — but it should stop the common surprises.

First: who is actually on the hook

The importer of record is legally responsible for a product being compliant. Not the factory. Not the trading company.

That distinction matters because the certificates that US law requires are issued by the importer, based on test reports. A supplier who says “we are CPSIA compliant” has told you nothing you can file. What you need from a supplier is the underlying test report, from a lab the CPSC recognises, tied to the specific material and finish in your order.

So the useful question is never “are you compliant”. It is “can you send me the report, and does it cover this colourway”.

CPSIA: it turns on who the product is for

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 is administered by the CPSC. Its strictest requirements apply to children’s products — consumer products designed or intended primarily for children 12 and under.

Seasonal decor is usually not a children’s product. But the line is blurrier than buyers expect, and the CPSC looks at how a piece is marketed and displayed, not just what it is. An Easter bunny figure merchandised in a toy aisle, a Halloween piece sold as a costume accessory, or anything with play value can land on the wrong side of it.

If a piece is treated as a children’s product, three numbers decide it:

Limit	Threshold
Lead in paint and surface coatings	90 ppm
Total lead in accessible substrate	100 ppm
Eight specified phthalates (toys and child care articles)	0.1% each

Children’s products also require testing at a CPSC-accepted third-party lab, a Children’s Product Certificate issued by the importer, and a permanent tracking label on the product and its packaging.

For everything else, if a CPSC rule applies to the product at all, the importer issues a General Certificate of Conformity instead. Lighter paperwork, same principle: somebody has to have actually tested something.

Prop 65: a warning law, not a ban

California’s Proposition 65 is the one that catches people out, because it does not prohibit anything. It requires a clear and reasonable warning before knowingly exposing someone in California to a listed chemical. The list runs to roughly 900 substances and is updated at least once a year.

For metal and wood decor, the ones that come up are lead, cadmium, phthalates, and formaldehyde.

Since 30 August 2018 a compliant consumer-product warning has to carry all four of these:

• The yellow triangle warning symbol
• The word WARNING
• The name of at least one listed chemical the product exposes you to
• The URL www.P65Warnings.ca.gov

A generic “this product contains chemicals known to the State of California…” label without a named chemical is the old format and no longer does the job.

Enforcement is mostly private. A plaintiff sends a 60-day notice of violation, and settling is usually cheaper than fighting, which is why the notices keep coming. The practical defence is documentation: know what is in the coating, and either test below the safe-harbour level or label correctly.

The one people forget: composite wood

If any part of a piece is MDF, particleboard, or hardwood plywood, TSCA Title VI applies — the federal formaldehyde emission standard that harmonised with California’s CARB Phase 2. The panel has to come from a certified mill, the documentation has to travel with the shipment, and the product needs to be labelled as compliant.

This is worth flagging because a lot of seasonal decor is MDF underneath a painted finish. Of the 137 styles on this site, 61 are wood or MDF. If your programme includes standing signs and word blocks or trays and baskets, this rule is in scope whether or not anybody mentioned it.

What to ask a supplier for

A checklist that takes five minutes and saves a quarter:

1. Test reports, not assurances — from BV, SGS, TÜV, Intertek or another recognised lab, naming the material and the finish.
2. Reports tied to your colourway. Lead and cadmium live in pigments. A report on the black version says nothing about the red one.
3. Composite wood documentation if there is any MDF or plywood in the piece.
4. A material declaration for anything you will have to write a Prop 65 warning about.
5. Retention samples kept by the factory from your production run, not just from the sample stage.
6. Third-party inspection booked before the container loads, not after. It is the only point where a finding is still cheap to fix.

Where we stand on this

Goods we ship test to CPSIA and California Prop 65, alongside EN71, RoHS, REACH and ASTM; lit lines carry UL or ETL. Production runs at our partner plant in Fujian, which holds BSCI, SEDEX, WCA and SQP audits and is an approved vendor for Walmart and Kohl’s. Eight QC technicians work the lines, and BV, TÜV and SGS inspections are welcome at any point in the run.

If you are scoping a programme and want the reports that apply to it, ask — it is faster than guessing which ones you need.