This week in safety: Check your refrigerator

This week's recall of all varieties of Nestle Toll House cookie dough once again underscores the urgent need to improve the nation's food safety system. Fortunately, a food safety bill is now making its way through Congress.

The bill contains several provisions long advocated by Consumers Union.  Among the items that will benefit consumers are:

• Inspections of high-risk food facilities at least every 6-12 months as well as inspection of lower-risk facilities at least once every 3 years.
• A requirement that says, after a period of information gathering and study, FDA will be able to require high-risk food facilities to submit the results of testing their finished food products for safety.
• A requirement that all registered domestic and foreign food facilities identify hazards and implement steps to prevent or reduce contaminants that may appear in food.
• A requirement that businesses keep basic safety records in a standard format so they are easier for FDA to review.
• Authority for FDA to order a recall if a company fails to do so when requested.
• A requirement that food facilities selling to American consumers register with the FDA and pay annual fees.
• A requirement that FDA gather information and run a pilot project to set up a method to trace food back to its source in the case of contamination. Such a "traceback" system will have to allow the FDA to trace food back to its source within two business days, a power which was clearly lacking at the agency during last year's salmonella outbreak with peppers.

More safety news
Six hazard recalls in six years: No pattern here, Starbucks says
San Francisco Examiner
With the latest product recall this week from Starbucks, this writer got curious about just how many times this has happened to our local/global bean joint. Six times in six years. Here's the recall record since 2003. Read more ...

Air bags may be harmful to your thumbs
The New York Times
Ken Thompson says that one second his right thumb was just fine, and then it was almost torn off. What happened in between was that the driver’s-side air bag deployed. Read more ...

Noxious Chinese drywall believed to contain smokestack contaminants
American Chronicle
Since late 2008, problems resulting from toxic drywall imported from China have increased. This substandard drywall can be found in as many as 250,000 homes in 13 states. Now, a Florida environmental consulting firm may have solved the mystery of what created toxic conditions in the drywall. Read more ...

Chinese drywall lawsuits to be consolidated in federal court in New Orleans
The Times-Picayune
A panel of federal judges ruled that lawsuits filed around the country against home builders, suppliers and manufacturers of Chinese drywall be moved to New Orleans, where U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon will preside over discovery and pre-trial hearings. Read more ...

When is a pen only a pen?
Product Safety Letter
In a letter from the General Counsel of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the CPSC helps those who have been struggling to understand how the agency interprets the "children" product definition in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Mere marketing to children does not convert a pen into a children's product, nor do novelty features necessarily do so. Read more ...

Cartoon = child's product = CPSIA trigger? Maybe not
Product Safety Letter
Does a cartoon character make a product so attractive to children under age 12 that the item must be considered a child's product and thus be subject to the CPSIA? Not always: price points and marketing can matter too. Read more ...

In some swimming pools, a nasty intestinal parasite
The New York Times
A swimming pool can offer relief from summer heat, but swimmers should know what they are jumping into. It could be a soup of nasty parasites. Reports of gastrointestinal illness from use of public pools and water parks have risen sharply in recent years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read more ...

Nanotechnology: The new asbestos?
Food Quality News
The safety risks of nanotechnology use by the food industry could make it the new asbestos. Nanotechnology refers to controlling matter at an atomic or molecular scale. In the food industry, the technology has excited manufacturers as its potential uses are explored, including detecting bacteria in packaging, or producing stronger flavors and colorings. Read more ...

Safety news from the CR blogs

• Cars: The angriest cities in which to drive
• Cars: Study finds drivers asleep at the wheel
• Cars: IIHS Top Safety Picks (Audi, Lexus, Toyota, Volkswagen)
• Health: Don't spend Father's Day in the ER

Don't miss these recalls

• 300,000 Wagner Spray Tech heat guns (fire and burn hazards)
• 33,000 Macy's Epic Threads and Greendog hooded sweatshirts (strangulation hazard)
• 29,000 D&D Distributing 'Chelsea' necklace and bracelet set (choking hazard)
• 16,000 Campbell Hausfeld air compressors (fire hazard)
  
• 900 JGR Copa kick body boards (lead paint)
• 800 SmartSpark BattEQ battery equalizers (fire hazard)

Comments

[MJ]

We have an LG bottom freezer refrigerator with water through the door that is 3 years old and literally falling apart. The freezer door doesn't close properly, the vegetable drawers are bowing, the shelf above the drawers is broken. The broken shelf won't hold the fronts of the vegetable drawers. And it stops running periodically. (the last time we were on vacation and lost everything) To get it running again, we have to unplug it and plug it in again. I am very disgusted with this refrigerator. Has anyone else had these problems?

[E. Nowak]

How about a law requiring that information about where a product has been manufactured -- even just the country -- be placed PROMINENTLY (10 point font or larger) on food?

I bought some decorated "gourmet" cookies for my husband last Christmas. He took one bite and he said they tasted like plaster. We decided to take them back to the grocery store (they cost a $1 a piece!). But as we were looking at the ingredient list, we noticed printed in microscopic pint at the bottom of the package: "Made in China". Ikes! Maybe they WERE made out of plaster -- or worse.