The Cost of Compliance with CPSIA

I’ve been researching XRF testing for about 2 weeks. As many people are finding it to be the way they want to go to test items (at least until August). I looked into the DIY version. Of course, I DIY everything else! Why not this?? So here are some company names and rental rates.

Renting your XRF gun:
Here are 3 companies that will rent an XRF gun to you. All of these companies say that they’re easy, user-friendly machines. They’ll download your data into an excel document for you. Honestly, at first I thought this would definitely be the way to go. Until I saw how much it would cost me.

Innov-X Systems
100 Sylvan Rd., Suite 500
Woburn, MA 01801
Phone: (781) 938-5005 Ext. 309

My contact was Kyle and he sent me a document detailing the following rental costs:
Monthly Rental - $4,900.00
Weekly Rental - $1,900.00
Daily Rental Daily (2-day minimum) - $575.00

I never got the information about training from Kyle. Though it seemed as though there was some type of training involved.

Atlas Inspection Technologies
500 Elliot Ave W
Suite A
Seattle WA 98119
Office 800-281-0650 ext. 2424

My contact was Tyler. In his email to me, he stated, “As far as training goes, if you are in the US no training is necessary. We send the gun along with a good set of instructions and it is very easy to use.”
Daily Rental - $500/day
Weekly Rental - $2000/week.

Ajax Environmental and Safety Supply
2537 S. Gessner, Suite 238
Houston, TX 77063
Ph (713) 789-4149

My contact was Judd. I spoke with him on the phone and he emailed me the following rates:
$400 - day
$1,400 - week
$4,000 - month

Estimated shipping $235 (EACH WAY).

After contacting these 3 companies I determined that there was no way I could do this myself. It was simply financially prohibitive. If a company were to provide me training, I might be more inclined. But again for those enormous daily rates PLUS shipping costs for overnight shipping each way (it costs a lot of money to ship an item that costs $40K to replace!), I determined this was not a cost effective method of testing for me.

My next step was to a local company who tests for lead in the home. They had never heard of CPSIA. They said while they use an XRF gun it’s not the same type of gun I needed and therefore were really unable to give me a definitive test. They’d charge me $125 just to come visit my house and then up to $500 for half a day of testing. But since they didn’t have the proper equipment to give me a pass/fail based on the lead levels required by the CPSIA, I decided this was not the best way to spend my money. However, I’m sure there are local companies out there who are equipped to handle these types of requests. So it is definitely worth exploring in your area. One place you might call to find one is your pediatrician's office. Since they often deal with testing children for lead, they may have a suggestion for a company that typically tests your home.

At this point I determined that neither of these options, renting a gun or finding a local company was the right one for me. I was starting to lose hope that there was a viable, affordable XRF option. I also considered trying to arrange for a co-op of folks to rent a gun with and split the cost, but I was having some trouble getting traction in that arena as well. So I decided to explore my options in terms of where I could send my items to be tested.

Stay Tuned for XRF Testing – Volume 2 Sending your Items for Testing