KIRO Team 7 Investigators had no trouble finding library books that contain hazardous levels of lead.

Now our positive test results are causing concern from coast-to-coast, not only with parents, but with book publishers and libraries.

As of this year, Congress wants kids books tested for lead.

Major book manufacturers like Disney and Random House have been fighting for a legal exemption to avoid that cost.

Local libraries are getting caught in the middle.

Pierce County library administrator, Georgia Lomax, is having a hard time trying to figure out which children's books -- if any -- on her shelves might be dangerous.

“We're kind of looking for some guidance and some decisions so we can be careful with our tax money. We don't just want to haul everything off the shelf and assume that everything is bad, yet we want to do the right thing for lead and kids," Lomax said.

KIRO Team 7 Investigators recently ran our own certified tests - finding some older children's books with illegal lead levels. In response, Lomax asked her staff to identify not only those books, but any that were printed before 1986.

“It looked like we didn't have a big problem, but we needed to know where we stood, so when they resolve it we know what the impact might be,” Lomax said.

The American Publishers Association (and its library counterpart, The American Library Association) are circulating a study as proof ordinary books don't contain dangerous materials.

KIRO Team 7 Investigators dug into the specifics and found a few details hidden from public eye.

Of the 152 books that tested negative for lead, nearly all were new, printed since 2004.

In at least 87 cases, we also traced lead results back to laboratories in either China or Hong Kong - the very places that started this toxic alarm in the first place. Twenty-seven additional lab reports failed to identify the location of testing and none appeared to be certified to U.S. standards.

Allan Adler is Vice President of Legal and Government Affairs for the American Publishers Association.

“Under the new law, any children's product is considered dangerous until proven safe,” Adler said.

Adler said Congress overreached in an attempt to keep lead out of all children's products. For example, federal regulators consider books written for anyone under 13 years old, a toy.

“A child at the age of 12 is in junior high school, seventh grade, a year away from high school. That child is not going to be chewing on books - putting books in their mouth,” Adler said.

Adler's group is pushing the Consumer Product Safety Commission to grandfather in used books so libraries don't have make a choice between expensive lead tests and pulling stock out of the hands of toddlers.

“We've always thought that some people view books as toxic in terms of the ideas contained in them, but never thought they'd be considered toxic in terms of their physical substance,” Adler said.

Unless something changes, libraries could start getting fined for failure to lead test their inventory, starting early next year.