In the news: product safety under scrutiny

Over the past few days, there have been several important newspaper stories highlighting key product-safety issues and the huge challenges the small Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) faces in keeping unsafe products out of our homes.  The stories also raise questions about the commission’s ability and wherewithal to do its job, given its shrinking budget and staff—something we’ve written about before.

In case you’ve missed the stories, here's a recap:

Today  The Wall Street Journal reports that although the CPSC says manufacturers must report all claims of potentially hazardous product defects within 24 hours, Mattel has taken months to make such disclosures to the agency. That includes its recall last month of nearly 18 million toys. According to the story, “Mattel Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Eckert said in an interview that the company discloses problems on its own timetable because it believes both the law and the commission's enforcement practices are unreasonable. Mattel said it should be able to evaluate hazards internally before alerting any outsiders, regardless of what the law says.”

On Sunday, Sept. 2, The New York Times noted that top officials at the Consumer Product Safety Commission  have “blocked enforcement actions, weakened industry oversight rules and promoted voluntary compliance over safety mandates, according to interviews with current and former senior agency officials and consumer groups and a review of commission documents.” For example, the story says, the agency has only a handful of agency inspectors looking for hazardous cargo before it enters the country and only a single employee responsible for testing suspected defective toys. “Safety initiatives have been stalled or dropped after dozens of jobs were eliminated in budget cutbacks.”

On Saturday, Sept. 1, The Washington Post reported that manufacturers are increasingly exporting substandard goods, including toys, that do not meet U.S. safety standards. “Companies notified the [CPSC] 97 times last year that they planned to export goods that did not meet some aspect of U.S. safety standards. That is up from 57 times in 2002, according to the agency.  Some consumer-advocacy groups agree that allowing U.S. manufacturers to export goods that do not meet U.S. standards not only puts foreigners at risk but also hurts the United States' ability to force other countries to comply with its rules. It "knocks us off any 'world's safety policeman' soapbox we claim to own," said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "It places foreign consumers at risk from our dangerous products."

We will continue to follow and analyze all the news on the product safety front.  Look for regular updates on this blog. 

Comments

[Doug Deuss]

It's my personal opinion that all toys and other items that are hazardous to us should be returned to China. That may be the only way to clean up this mess! In the meantime, I will not buy China-made articles.

[Joan Levinson]

Dear Ms. Meyer:
Now I understand that we have to be worried not only about the safety of toys but even plastic baby bibs, which get brittle when they are used and may shed flakes of plastic imbued with toxic materials like lead. Fortunately, my two year old grand-daughter, showing better sense than her elders, has always refused to tolerate any bib that was not made of cotton materials, as she found the plastic too scratchy and would immediately tear the bib off. She also has been trained to hand any very small item found on the floor to the nearest grown-up, rather than mouthing it. I've been the recipient of some very strange things, including dust balls but that's OK. We're keeping tabs on the "Toy Story" and being very careful to read labels on everything we buy for her. Shame on Mattel. They won't get my money this holiday season. Besides, even when my daughter was small, I felt that Barbie was over-rated and oversold.
Yours, J.Levinson