By Jim Tankersley and Patricia Callahan

The Senate on Thursday passed the most sweeping reform of the nation's consumer safety system in a generation, including stricter tests for toys, greater public access to complaints about products and an overhaul of the federal safety agency charged with regulating most items in American homes.

The bill, which passed 79-13, is tougher in key areas than a House version approved last year. House and Senate negotiators will meet to reconcile the differences before the bill heads to President Bush. Both versions of the legislation would significantly reduce the amount of lead allowed in children's products.

A Tribune investigation last year exposed how the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission was so slow to act on complaints about dangerous children's products that children died while regulators failed to spot hazards or promptly recall products. The reports also revealed the scope of products tainted by lead.

The legislation, which grew out of hearings prompted by the "Hidden Hazards' series, seeks to give the agency more power, more staff and more money.

The biggest change for consum- ers would occur if the Senate provision for a public database of product safety complaints survives. The House version called for simply studying whether to include consumer complaints in such a database.

Currently, consumers who want to know if a product - whether it's a crib, a toy or a chain saw - has been linked to injuries or deaths can check government recall lists or file public records requests that take months, sometimes years, to arrive. Consumers are left in the dark about emerging hazards while the government investigates and then negotiates recall alerts with companies.

In an attempt to make those recalls more transparent, an amendment inserted Thursday on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) requires recall notices to include the names and locations of factories where the flawed products were produced. The failure of recall notices to include such information has allowed overseas factories to continue selling tainted products to unwitting U.S. importers that don't know of the factories' troubled track record.

As lawmakers negotiate a compromise, the areas where lobbying will be most intense include proposals to protect whistle-blowers who expose dangerous products at their companies and a provision to give state attorneys general greater power to enforce safety laws.

Sticking point

But the biggest sticking point is likely to be the complaint database. The debate boils down to this: Do lawmakers think consumers should be allowed to decide whether safety complaints that haven't been investigated have merit?

Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the CPSC, said she thinks they shouldn't. In a recent interview, she said the people who complain about products can get the model numbers wrong and can misidentify hazards.

"We would have to take needed resources away from addressing real consumer needs and redirecting them to a database that will be of questionable - if not detrimental - impact on consumers," said Nord.

Her concerns echo those of the National Association of Manufacturers. The powerful trade group told senators in a letter Thursday that disclosing every complaint - "no matter how trivial or ill-motivated" - would alarm consumers, falsely accuse companies and expose trade secrets.

The bill's supporters, however, note that it empowers the CPSC to remove incorrect information and allows manufacturers to include their comments alongside the complaints, which can come from consumers, firefighters, emergency-room doctors, coroners and others.

The measure's chief sponsor, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), used the story of Magnetix toys, a central subject of the Tribune investigation, to explain to Senate colleagues why the complaint database is needed. The CPSC didn't promptly act on warnings that baby aspirin-size magnets were popping out of Magnetix, and children ate them.

The magnets ripped through the intestines of dozens of children around the country, killing one toddler.

"The parents really had no way of knowing these were dangerous," Pryor said.

Rules Crackdown

As the number of toy recalls exploded last year, many consumers were alarmed to learn that toys don't have to pass stringent safety tests before they're sold. Unlike the House bill, the Senate version makes mandatory the voluminous safety rules that now are voluntary. It also requires companies to use independent laboratories to certify that their toys pass those tests.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Amy Klobuchar (DMinn.), key proponents of the legislation, said they expect the database and the tougher testing requirements from the Senate to prevail in the final bill. Durbin credited Tribune coverage with spurring needed reform to the CPSC.

"After about 20 years," he said, "we're finally getting serious about making this agency relevant."

In passing their bill, senators adopted a House provision that would force the CPSC to adopt mandatory safety standards for nursery products such as cribs, bath seats and playpens - the three nursery items linked to the most deaths. There are now no federal safety standards for bath seats and playpens, and crib rules don't address many of the potentially fatal hazards. The provision would require companies to test their products to those new safety rules using independent labs.

Both versions bar industries that the CPSC regulates from paying for travel of agency commissioners or staff - a conflict the Tribune investigation first exposed.

The bills also set strict limits for lead in children's products. The Senate version bans all but trace amounts of lead in products for kids younger than 8. The House bill applies to products for children up to age 12 but allows the CPSC to exempt items in which the lead can't leach out when a child uses a product.

Debate about which items will leach lead and which won't has simmered for years. The issue is especially important for toymakers that use vinyl, which often contains lead. Manufacturers argue that lead cannot seep out even when a child chews on them.

KEY POINTS OF BILL

- Stricter tests for toys

- Greater public access to product complaints

- Tighter limits on lead in toys

- Recall notices that identify locations of problem factories