The federal government requires safety testing of all materials in products meant to be used and consumed by children. The Science Kit manufacturing companies claim they use the same paper clips that any other company does, and it's laughable that somehow now that they're inside the kit, as opposed to buying them in a store, they become children's items. 

"There's never been a problem with lead or anything in any of these products," said Paul Nathanson, spokesman for the HandsOn Science Partnership.

Safety commissioners are insisting that the regulations won't ban science kits and would only be applied on an individual basis. Safety commissioner Roy Phillips, said the new guidelines have a multiple criteria to determine the safety of a product for children, especially how they're marketed. These regulations won't apply to items that adults would mostly use, like telescopes and microscopes.

"It is crazy that the Hands-On Science Partnership needs to be concerned about doing lead tests on products purchased at an office supply store and then packaged into a science teaching kit for use with children," Commissioner Nancy Nord wrote on her blog. "Even crazier is the fact that if a teacher buys the same paper clip at the same store and uses it for the same science teaching project, it's okay."