Professor Jeffrey Weidenhamer: Lessons learned about lead

When the Consumer Product Safety Commission recently recalled a lead-laden key chain sold at Wal-Mart for three years, Ashland University Professor Jeffrey Weidenhamer was pleased but puzzled. Pleased that the CPSC had acted to remove the key chain from the market but puzzled that it had taken them so long to do so. After all, Weidenhamer had found high lead levels in a similar key chain when he tested it in 2006 and reported his results to the CPSC that December. What prompted the April recall was not Weidenhamer's testing but reports that a nine-month-old child who had mouthed one had elevated levels of lead in her blood.

"You shouldn't have to wait a year or 16 months to recall a product,"  Weidenhamer told a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Until recently, Weidenhamer’s research specialty had been chemical compounds produced by plants. Now he is more widely known for the research that he and his students at the Ohio college have done on lead in children’s toys. His findings may have resulted in at least 11 recalls by the Consumer Product Safety Commission involving more than 1.4 million individual items. That’s an impressive track record—although Weidenhamer is hesitant about touting it. As he wrote in Ashland's alumni magazine, “It is unfortunate that someone can become well known for drawing attention to lead contamination issues. It certainly would be far better for the kids if there were no story at all about lead contamination in these products.”

Weidenhamer’s fame all started with a chemistry class, Lead and Civilization, that he taught for non-majors and that focused on the chemistry and toxicity of lead. Then in the spring semester of 2006, he learned that a four-year-old Minnesota boy had died of lead poisoning after swallowing a lead-laden charm given away with a pair of shoes by Reebok International. (Earlier this year, Reebok agreed to pay a record $1 million penalty for distributing the charm bracelet).

Knowing that the analysis of metal samples for lead was not too involved, Weidenhamer thought his class would be able to conduct tests in the lab to see if similar items were on store shelves in his Ohio city. “I was not prepared for what my students found,” he said. “In the first set of 20 inexpensive jewelry items, 14 were heavily leaded, in two cases as high as 100 percent lead by weight.” CPSC guidelines for lead in children’s jewelry items sets a maximum level of 0.06 percent lead by weight.

Weidenhamer and his students have done repeated testing since the spring of 2006, including some tests of Halloween toys completed at the request of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.  Weidenhamer says he tested more than 50 different items and found lead contamination in six of them, including plastic teeth. That, he says “seemed like the worst since they were clearly designed to go into a child’s mouth.” (The teeth were recalled by the CPSC.)

This spring, Weidenhamer found lead in several Easter products, two of which were recalled by the CPSC the Friday before Easter.  “It is a surprise that after all the publicity about toy recalls of last year ... you can still find items on the shelves with lead in them.” He said he will continue to test products. “Hopefully by Halloween this year, we won’t be finding lead in paint in these products,” he said. “It shouldn’t be remotely possible for me or anyone to go out to American stores and pull products from shelves, test them and find levels of lead in them.”

Let's hope he's right but as long as it is possible, we are thankful for Weidenhamer’s efforts. And for that, he becomes one of our safety crusaders.

CPSC recalls related to complaints filed by Weidenhamer

• 86,400 children's "Ultra Gear" bracelets (DM Merchandising) Feb. 7, 2007
• 115,000 "Claudia Jublot" children's rings (Big Lots) Feb. 23, 2007
• 396,000 metal key chains (Dollar General) April 3, 2007
• 63,000 Frankenstein tumblers (Dollar General) Oct. 4, 2007
• 55,000 Halloween skull pails (Albert’s) Oct. 17, 2007
• 142,000 purple Halloween pails with witch decorations (Family Dollar Store) Oct. 25, 2007
• 43,000 “Ugly teeth” party favors (Amscan Inc.) Oct. 31, 2007
• 10,000 Halloween-themed baskets (Hobby Lobby) Nov. 16, 2007
• 205,000 pieces assorted Rachel Rose jewelry (Family Dollar Store) Nov. 21, 2007
• 13,000 camouflage eggs and spinning egg top toys (Hobby Lobby) Mar. 21, 2008
• 310,000 seasonal writing pads (Michaels Stores)

Shelby Esses: A mother's intuition exposes a toy hazard

When 20-month old Jacob Esses ended up in an inexplicable coma last October, one person was sure she knew the answers that the doctors couldn’t find—his mom. Shelby Esses was certain her son’s frightening state was due to the Aqua Dots beads he had swallowed earlier that day. Esses was so confident that as she waited for news about her son’s condition, she asked her mother and mother-in-law to scour store shelves for Aqua Dots looking for the ingredients on the package. 

Fortunately, six hours after falling into a coma, Jacob woke up.  Determined to find out what had caused her son to become so severely ill, Esses didn't give up her search until she found the answer. And after she did, she took a number of steps that illustrate what one person can do to make a difference.

When her son became sick, Esses did all of the right things: She contacted the company that manufactured Aqua Dots to inform them of her son’s condition. She asked for the toy’s ingredient list and even submitted this list to the toxicology lab at her son’s hospital. The lab results showed that the toy was indeed toxic—it contained ingredients that when ingested metabolized into GHB, also known as the date-rape drug. Her information helped lead to a recall of Aqua Dots on November 7, 2007. The recall of 4.2 million sets was one of the fastest toy recalls in U.S. history.

But Esses didn’t stop at the recall. In the following months, she and several other parents of children who also suffered injuries from toys, played a critical role in lobbying Congress to enact tougher safety rules. She was an articulate spokeswoman who helped to put a human face on the issue.  As she told her story in Congress: “I was angry.  I am still angry. I think that there needs to be a few changes made for toys and other children's products that are sold in the United States.”

Among other things, Esses believes that products should be tested by independent labs to ensure that they do not contain lead or other harmful ingredients and that companies should post phone numbers on their Web sites for parents to call with questions about products.

The good news for all parents, families and caregivers is that both the Senate and the House of Representatives have just passed new legislation governing the safety of toys. The language of the two measures needs to be reconciled so we end up with one powerful bill. We are hopeful that Congress will get to work and do just that in the days ahead. When that happens, we will have Esses, among others, to thank.

For her efforts, we are naming Esses one of our safety crusaders. If you know someone who should be a safety crusader please let us know.

Ward and Montana Stone: Father-daughter safety sleuthing team

Genetics may help explain why 11-year-old Montana Stone became so interested in what was in her jewelry box.

Montana’s mother is a biology teacher who, according to Montana, frequently cautioned her children about going to old houses because of lead paint hazards. Montana’s father is a leading wildlife pathologist for New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation who developed a lead testing process to determine if animals had been killed by bullets illegally when hunters were claiming they had used only a bow and arrow.

So it’s really not hard to understand why Montana started wondering earlier this year if the favorite items in her jewelry box contained lead. “There were a lot of people just talking about lead in jewelry and I started wondering if there's lead in [mine],” Montana recalled in a recent telephone interview.

Her curiosity was all that her father needed to launch a full-scale testing of children’s jewelry. Together, Montana and her dad went to stores near their home in Albany and bought dozens of pieces of children’s jewelry. “We bought about 75 pieces and tested into the night,” at Stone’s office, the elder Stone said. “I would hand a piece to him and he would test it,” Montana added. (Don’t worry, both wore surgical gloves so they wouldn’t get exposed to any lead). What they found was distressing: “We found lots and lots of lead, far more than half” of the pieces they purchased, Ward Stone said. And some of those pieces had very high levels of lead.

The father-daughter team then bought more items, including metal beads at Michaels Stores, where Montana buys a lot of arts and crafts items. Those items also had high levels of lead.

Disturbed by the findings, Ward Stone took his results to the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The staff conducted another round of tests resulting in both a nationwide recall of more than 500,000 pieces of jewelry as well as a settlement with 12 companies, including the national chains of Michaels and Big Lots, in which they promised to stop selling lead-tainted items in their stores.

Father Stone gives all the credit to his daughter. “If it had not been for her, Dad would not have done what he did”—or continues to do. Both Montana and her dad are still buying and testing jewelry. And they’ve expanded their studies to include plates and mugs as well. The results continue to be disturbing; much of the dishware has been coated with lead paint, Stone reports.

Certainly, both Montana and Ward Stone deserve to be added to our list of Safety Crusaders for their curiosity, persistence, diligence—and results.

If you know of any safety crusaders who should be added to our list, please let us know.

Congress takes some key consumer actions before holiday recess

Congress left town for the holidays Thursday, after giving consumer safety advocates some of the items on their wish list, and leaving them tantalizing close to others.

Congress made substantial progress on a number of key issues—most notably the House’s unanimous passage of a bill to update the Consumer Product Safety Commission to help it become more effective in regulating the 15,000 types of products under its purview. The measure still has a way to go before it can become law. The Senate has yet to consider its version, which includes stronger enforcement provisions than the House version and has run into some opposition.  Even so, we are pleased that so many in Congress realize how important it is to reform our current product safety system.

The House bill is a compromise that is supported by a number of consumer groups including Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, the Consumer Federation of America, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. It would make meaningful improvements to the under-funded and understaffed agency and includes a major provision to reduce lead in children’s toys and other products. It also establishes new testing requirements for children’s products. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark), the author of the Senate version, has said he is “one hundred percent committed to passing” the Senate version in 2008. We can’t imagine a better way to start the New Year.

While we wish the effort to upgrade the CPSC’s powers had been completed in 2007, we are pleased that both the House and Senate did agree to boost the agency’s budget to $80 million this fiscal year. That’s a $17 million increase, or nearly 30 percent, over last year’s funding and more than $16.75 million more than what President Bush requested for the current fiscal year.  The measure is part of an omnibus federal funding bill to keep the government running. So far, the CPSC hasn’t said what it plans to do with the extra money but we await that announcement with eager interest.

Nancy Baker: A daughter's drowning leads to pool safety reforms

Nancy Baker never envisioned becoming a leading advocate for safer pools and spas.  However, the tragic accident that killed her 7-year old daughter Graeme in 2002 prompted her to act. As she says, “It helps me make some sense of something that makes no sense at all. It was an utterly preventable and senseless death.”

Baker’s personal story, coupled with her tireless campaign to make sure such a tragedy doesn’t happen to others, is one of the chief reasons why Congress could soon enact a federal pool and spa safety bill named for Graeme. The bill, which would direct the Consumer Product Safety Commission to set an anti-entrapment safety standard for pool and spa covers, was passed by unanimous vote in the House in October and now awaits Senate action. The measure also encourages states, through financial incentives, to pass strong laws to require fences and anti-entrapment drain cover devices to reduce childhood drowning. Although the measure has strong bipartisan support, its fate is uncertain according to The Washington Post because the fiscal conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, (R-Okla.) has put a legislative hold on the measure, along with several dozen other bills, because they authorize new spending without offsetting that expense elsewhere in the federal budget.

Graeme Baker, who had been swimming unassisted since she was three, drowned after becoming trapped underwater by hundreds of pounds of suction force from a hot-tub drain. Graeme had gone to the graduation party of a family friend with her mother and four sisters, including her twin, Jackie. Soon after they arrived, one of Baker's daughters ran toward her and screamed, "Mommy! Mommy! Graeme is in the hot tub." Baker says: "I jumped in."

As she later testified in Congress: “It took two adults to pull her off this drain, the force so great that the cover of the drain cracked in half removing her.” 

Janette Fennell: Safety at under 5-miles-per-hour

“It if can’t be done, don’t interrupt the person who is doing it.”

Janette Fennell says that quote has become her motto. And in safety circles, Fennell has certainly become better known than the person who uttered those words -- he, or she, is known as “anonymous.” Fennell, the founder and president of Kids and Cars, is determined to “make a difference.”  So, she says, don’t interrupt her when she’s trying to figure out how to do something that many say can’t be done.

Kids and Cars is a nonprofit safety group whose mission is to make sure no child is killed or injured in non-traffic motor vehicle accidents. Such incidents include children being backed over by adults—often by their own parents in a driveway; children left in cars in hot weather; children inadvertently setting cars in motion and children caught—and sometimes strangled—when the power window switch is unwittingly turned on. According to data collected by Kids and Cars, at least 598 children were involved in such incidents last year, resulting in 219 fatalities. Already this year, there have been 468 incidents and 133 fatalities.

This summer there have been some harrowing examples. In Kyle, Texas a, mother accidentally backed over her 18-month-old son when he wandered behind her pickup. On Long Island, New York, this week, a mother ran over her five-year-old when she didn't realize he was in front of her minivan as she pulled into the driveway. And earlier this summer in Concord, California, an 11-month-old was found dead buckled into his car seat in an oven-hot minivan after his father forgot he was in the back seat and went to work.

For more than a decade, Fennell has worked tirelessly for new government rules to reduce such incidents. It was largely through her efforts that the government, in 2000, mandated release latches in car trunks. More recently, her safety campaign helped prompt the government to issue new rules requiring safer power switches on windows although Fennell wants even tougher rules that would require windows to auto-reverse when the window glass hits an obstacle.

Fennell believes that little has changed since Ralph Nader  emerged as a national consumer advocate with his book “Unsafe at Any Speed” in 1965. At the time Nader accused the car makers of resisting safety features such as seat belts.  “We have the same problems today,” says Fennell, although now, there are so many non-traffic incidents that she suggests the book be retitled “Unsafe at No Speed.” Backovers are “one of the top reasons for child fatalities in this country,” causing about about 2,400 hospital emergency room visits and 100 fatalities a year, she said.  "There is a huge hole missing in education and understanding of dangers of vehicles at zero to five miles-per-hour," she says. 

Fennell is now pressing Congress to pass legislation that would require the government to issue a standard for vehicles that would require car makers to improve the field of view when backing up.  The legislation, spearheaded by Fennell, is called the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act and has companion bills in both the Senate and the House.  Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, supports this bi-partisan legislation and has collected more than 32,000 signatures petitioning Congress for its passage.

Calling herself a survivor advocate, Fennell explains that she became a car-safety missionary after a bone-chilling event. In October 1995, she and her husband and their then-infant child, Alex, were returning to their California home around midnight when two men kidnapped them, forcing the adults at gunpoint into the trunk of their own car. They were driven to a remote area, robbed and abandoned. The Fennells were able to tear apart the trunk’s interior, find the release cable and free themselves. Realizing that their son was no longer in the back seat, they called police who discovered the boy unharmed outside their house. Fennell knows her family was lucky; the outcome could have been very different. And her work makes it clear she’s determined to make sure that’s the case for hundreds of other families.

By any definition, Fennell (who now lives in Kansas) is a safety crusader, someone who belongs on our growing list of citizens and groups determined to make the world a safer place.

Do you know any crusader we should meet? Please send us your nominations by adding your comments.

Rosemary Shahan: from a lemon she made ... lemon laws

Consumer activist Rosemary Shahan was at one time so inexperienced that the posters she used to picket an auto dealer were completely illegible. This is the same Shahan whose tireless campaigns have led to lemon laws around the country, airbag requirements for every car sold in the U.S., numerous auto recalls, and a car buyer’s Bill of Rights in California.

Since 1979, Shahan has worked aggressively to expose deceptive and illegal practices, recall unsafe or defective vehicles, and improve auto safety technology. (For example, we can thank Shahan for making car manufacturers install height adjusters for seat belts). Currently, she is working to get California and other states to participate in the National Motor Vehicle Titling Information System. This national  information-sharing database allows law enforcement agents, and buyers and sellers of motor vehicles to track car histories. Doing so could curtail fraud involving vehicles damaged in wrecks or floods as well as identify stolen vehicles.

Shahan well deserves to be on this blog’s list of Safety Crusaders. Like many of our previous crusaders, she didn’t deliberately set out to be a consumer activist. It all happened by chance—and somewhat spontaneously—after a California auto dealer repeatedly failed to fix her car, damaged in a collision, in a timely fashion. "They kept saying it would be done and it wasn't," Shahan recently recalled. “After three
months, they admitted they hadn’t even ordered all the parts yet ... and said if we complained, they would put bad parts in the car. They even showed us samples of bad parts.” Shahan, then an English teacher, started to picket the dealership. “I was a terrible picketer. At first, people couldn’t read my signs.” But over time, her signs improved and more and more people approached Shahan to tell her their own car horror stories.

That was in 1980, when California’s state law said consumers had to give manufacturers a “reasonable” number of repair attempts before a car could be considered a lemon. “But nobody knew what was reasonable and at one hearing, Ford said it would take up to 30 tries” before it deemed a car a lemon, Shahan said.

That acknowledgement led to the drafting of a state lemon law in California that served as a model for similar laws across the country. Now, Shahan says, car manufacturers have four chances in California to repair a new car before it is labeled a lemon and the consumer is entitled to a full refund or replacement vehicle.

Shahan never got her wrecked car back, but she used a financial settlement from the dealer to launch a consumer advocacy group, now called CARS for Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, that has been on the leading edge of many auto-safety issues.

For the record, Shahan drives a 1988 Volvo, which she bought new because it had a driver's side airbag -- a new feature at the time. It now has 230,000 miles on it. “It’s a workhorse,” says Shahan. So too is Shahan -- and for that we are safer, and most grateful.

You can find out more about Shahan and her crusade at the CARS Web site.

Do you know any Safety Crusader candidates? Please let us know.

Kathy Fackler: Working to keep amusement parks safe

Last Friday, a 21-year-old park employee was fatally ejected from the Mind Scrambler, a spinning ride at Rye Playland amusement park in New York, the third person to be killed by a ride at the park since 2004, and the second fatality on the Mind Scrambler. Two weeks ago, a 13-year-old girl had both her legs severed, just above the ankles, on an amusement ride, when a cable snapped on a drop tower at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.    

These gruesome accidents once again raise the question of amusement park safety — and the accountability of amusement park owners and government regulators to make sure such rides are safe.

That's been Kathy Fackler's mission for the last eight years.  Fackler has been pushing for stronger amusement park oversight and more public disclosure of park accidents since 1998, when her  then 5-year-old son David had hurt himself so badly on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain roller-coaster ride that he lost part of his foot. She now runs Saferparks, a public service organization devoted to preventing ride injuries through research, information sharing, and advocacy.

The latest incidents make Fackler's case even stronger. As she commented last month, after the Kentucky accident:

"What happened to that little girl highlights the high price of even a single failure. The only brag-worthy statistic for limb loss on an amusement park ride is zero. Cables don’t just snap. If they do, something has gone badly wrong in the system. There’s a history behind every serious accident that, if uncovered, can illuminate a path to prevention — not just on that ride or in that park, but on similar equipment across the globe.  Public records ensure that safety-critical information is available to all who need it, expanding the knowledge base of the engineer and inspector communities, and allowing consumers the right of informed choice in the marketplace."

Fackler didn't set out to be a safety crusader after her son was injured. Initially, she just wanted some answers — a chance to talk to Disneyland engineers to understand what happened. She said she was not after some big monetary legal award, but wanted to know what steps Disneyland had taken to prevent future injuries. But the answers were hard to come by. At first, as Fackler recently recalled, Disney officials told her the only way she could find out if changes had been made to the ride was to “go to the park, buy a ticket and take a ride to see if anything looked different.” 

For Fackler, her “watershed moment” came several months after David was injured, when a Disney guest died in a Christmas Eve accident on another ride. News reports said it was the park’s first serious injury in four years. Fackler personally knew otherwise —and wanted to make sure the public did as well. She contacted the press and the California state legislator who had been pushing for tighter amusement park laws for years, offering help. “I thought it would be 10 minutes of my time. I was very naïve.” Although it took less than a year to get the new law passed in 1999, it took several more to write the rules to implement it. By that time, Fackler was so vested in the new law that it’s no surprise she participated in the rule-writing committees. “By that time I was hooked,” she said. 

Marilyn Furer: Working to get the lead out of children's products

Marilyn Furer is a doer. In the early 1970s, when her 18-month-old daughter Julie was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, the Illinois resident promptly founded that state’s first chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to help raise funds for research and to educate parents and families. She’s been an activist ever since. 

Fast-forward some 30 years, to 2005, when Furer heard news reports that plastic lunch boxes could contain lead. On her next visit to her two granddaughters in Florida, then 7 and 9, she decided to test the five plastic lunch boxes in the house with a home-testing kit she bought at a local hardware store. The result: three had lead and were thrown away. 

About a year later, her newest grandson Jensen began wearing plastic baby bibs; he drooled so heavily that he was nicknamed “Waterfall.” Furer bought some plastic bibs at Wal-Mart hoping they would help him stay dry. Within a few days, however, she noticed Jensen was putting the bibs in his mouth, sucking them vigorously. Furer couldn’t believe that a baby product could contain lead, but nonetheless decided to test the bibs. “What the heck. You can’t be too safe when it comes to kids,” she said in a recent telephone interview.  She bought some new home testing kits, confident none would turn pink, the sign that lead is present. “To my dismay and disbelief, there were high levels of lead in these bibs,” she said.   

Initially, Furer thought she made a mistake or the testing equipment was faulty. She didn’t know where to turn, but found the group that initiated the lead lunch box tests, the Center for Environmental Health in California, and sent the bibs and the testing equipment to them. 

Randy Swart: bike-safety crusader

As a child, Randy Swart viewed his bicycle as his “freedom machine.” After all, he recently recalled, it was the only way to get around the small Virginia town where he grew up. 

Today, even though Swart has plenty of ways to get around, the bicycle has become an even more important part of his life. It’s not just because the 63-year-old Swart bikes 80 to 100 miles a week, partly for exercise, partly for errands and always for pleasure. Rather, bicycling — and more particularly safe bicycling — is a full-time mission for Swart. 

Over the past three decades, Swart has played an instrumental role in bringing safer helmets to U.S. riders. Swart is director of the all-volunteer Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute — with a must-see Web site for anyone in the market for a bike helmet. And currently he is also vice chairman of the helmet and headgear subcommittee for ASTM-International, a nonprofit, voluntary standard setting organization.

Swart runs the 18-year-old helmet institute out of his Arlington, Va., home with a $12,000 annual budget, all from consumer donations. He first became involved in helmet safety in the mid-1970s, when the Washington Area Bicyclist Association began testing helmets. At the time, he said, there were no standards. “There was an awful lot of junk in the market. You couldn’t tell if a given helmet was protective or not.” In fact, he said, initial tests showed that some of the helmets then for sale offered “almost zero protection.”

After a heated battle, the industry adopted a voluntary safety standard in 1984 through ANSI, another standards organization. But this standard was eventually deemed insufficient largely because it wasn’t mandatory. So under orders from Congress, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued mandatory standards in 1999. Today, any helmet sold in the U.S. — no matter if it costs $10 or $150 — must comply.

The Helmet Institute played a critical role in the development of these standards, with Swart, a  former U.S. foreign service officer, at its helm since the very beginning.  Today, much of Swart’s attention is devoted to the Web site, which last year attracted 800,000 visitors. This year, Swart hopes that number will grow to over 1 million.      

Although helmets have come a long way in 30 years, there is still much room for improvement, Swart says. He believes helmets should provide more coverage; they should come further down on the sides and back. Helmets should also provide better protection in incidents with lesser impact. “Today there’s good protection in major impacts but we need anti-concussion helmets” for more minor incidents. “It’s not a simple thing” to do."   

And most importantly, Swart said, helmets need to fit riders better and more easily. “They don’t fit most people as well as they should.”    

To anyone who knows Swart, it shouldn’t be surprising that this modest man declines to take personal credit for the nation's helmet standards. “No one person stood up and proclaimed we need better helmets,” he says. “There were lots of people.” Even so, for Swart’s persistent efforts, we want to make him one of our Safety Crusaders. 

If you know anyone who should join our noble list, please let us know.

By the way, Swart has three bike helmets: a neon yellow for daytime and a white one with lights attached by Velcro for night. The third is another “screaming lime yellow,” which he wears when he and his wife Barbara use their tandem bike. “Our helmets have to match,” Swart says.

Previously: Bike helmets - not wigs - save lives

Poison Control Centers: A vital, fragile resource

This week is National Poison Prevention Week, and we’d like to give thanks to the nation’s Poison Control Centers. 

Those of us who have called the 1-800-222-1222 hotline when our children (or even our pets) have swallowed something worrisome are already indebted to the medical professionals who staff these centers.   

If you’re lucky enough not to have needed to make that call, consider these numbers: 

1. In 2006, the 61 U.S. poison centers handled more than 2.5 million reports. 
2. Poisoning is the second most common form of unintentional death in the U.S. In any given year, there will be between 2 and 4 million poison exposures, 60 percent involving children under 6 in their own home. 
3. More than 70 percent of the cases handled by the poison centers were managed safely at home, resulting in dramatic cost savings — estimated at nearly a billion dollars in 2005 — over visits to the emergency room. 

But the willingness of the American public to keep funding the centers is uncertain. Richard Weisman, the American Association of Poison Control Centers' legislative affairs director and director of the Florida Poison Center in Miami, notes that the centers are funded by a patchwork of federal, state, local, and private sources. This network is particularly fragile in times of financial cutbacks. In 2003, Congress authorized an annual appropriation of $30.1 million for the centers. But in actuality they only received less than $24 million in funding for the 2007 fiscal year, and the Bush administration is proposing a further drop of 58 percent for the 2008 fiscal year. 

Such a cut, said Weisman, “would be catastrophic,” and could result in “almost complete elimination of education and prevention efforts. Many of centers would have to reduce their hours of operation and reduce the number of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to answer the phone.” The result could be lots of busy signals and unanswered emergency calls. “The bottom line will be significant,” with an increase in deaths, predominantly children. 

And if it’s your call that goes unanswered?

Black Dog Tavern Co. fined ... with a little help

Kudos to our dogged investigator Janell Mayo Duncan, Senior Counsel at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. As a result of her sleuthing, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on Dec. 15 that Black Dog Tavern Co. has agreed to pay a $50,000 civil penalty after the company continued to sell children’s hooded sweatshirts with drawstrings even though the clothing had been recalled in February. Clothing like this poses a strangulation hazard because drawstrings can catch on playground equipment, bus doors, cribs, etc. From January 1985 through January 1999, the CPSC received reports of 22 deaths and 48 non-fatal entanglement incidents involving drawstrings on children’s clothing. (No incidents or injuries have been reported relating to Black Dog's sweatshirts.) 

Here’s the story behind the Black Dog penalty: 

During the summer of 2005, Janell and her family visited Martha’s Vineyard where she purchased a hooded sweatshirt from The Black Dog General Store for her 6-year-old daughter. The next day, when her daughter was wearing her new sweatshirt, Janell kept asking her daughter to keep the hood’s drawstrings out of her mouth. After about the fourth request, Janell stopped short, realizing that the sweatshirts shouldn’t have had strings in the first place, because of the danger of strangulation. Eventually, Janell called the store owner and left a message raising concerns about the sweatshirts. Janell also sent an e-mail to her contacts at the CPSC about the sweatshirts -- as well as some Basix USA children’s windbreakers she had also seen in a store in Martha’s Vineyard and later in Maine. Those windbreakers also had drawstrings in the hoods. Janell’s tip led to Black Dog cooperating with the CPSC to recall the sweatshirts in February 2006. 

Then, in August 2006, Janell and family were back at the Vineyard. She again stopped by a Black Dog General Store in Oak Bluffs and toured the kids' section — where she found more children's hooded sweatshirts with strings in the hoods, although some did not have strings. Janell alerted the salesperson, who said that the sweatshirts were not supposed to have strings. The clerk said a new shipment had just been received and that someone in the warehouse must be new and unaware that the strings were supposed to be removed from the sweatshirts. Another clerk was directed to pull them from the shelves and put them in the back. About an hour later, Janell stopped by another Black Dog General Store, also in Oak Bluffs, where she found more hooded children's sweatshirts, some of which also had pull strings in the hoods. Some had the strings removed and one clerk was stationed near the section, busily cutting strings out of the hoods of children's sweatshirts. There was a bag on the table being filled with the strings that had been removed. She took pictures of the sweatshirts  at both locations, and a picture of the bag being filled with strings.   

Now in full hunt mode, Janell stopped by the youth section in same store where she had seen Basix USA children's windbreakers sold with strings in the hoods the summer before. And the story was the same: more of the same windbreakers with string in the hoods. She took pictures of these as well, and forwarded all the photos to the CPSC. 

Needless to say, Janell is pleased that the CPSC has acted on the Black Dog sweatshirts, although she wonders why it took so long -- and also why the agency hasn’t yet taken any action on Basix. We asked the CPSC, and spokeswoman Julie Vallese said she didn’t know anything about the Basix issue; however, that doesn't mean the agency's Compliance division isn't working on it. As for Black Dog, she said it takes the government time to determine the nature and severity of the problem before issuing a civil penalty. As Janell points out, her story illustrates that YOU can make a difference! If you see any products that you think are being sold despite the fact that they have been recalled, contact us  and notify the CPSC as well.

Fabuloso's better bottle - thanks to you

In March 2006, after being alerted by a Consumer Reports reader, we reported on all-purpose cleaners whose packaging may entice children to drink them (see photo).  The vivid-colored, sweet and fruity-smelling bottled cleaners also lacked child-resistant caps, which federal law does not require, since their labels described the products as cleaners.  One of the products highlighted in the report was Colgate-Palmolive's Fabuloso, a multi-use cleaner whose packaging resembles that of a fruity energy drink. In the wake of our story, Colgate-Palmolive promised to use a child-proof cap on Fabuloso later this year.  Well, it’s later this year, and Consumer Reports shoppers recently purchased a bottle of Fabuloso with the child-safety cap.  Although the bottle still resembles an energy drink, we are happy Colgate-Palmolive has redesigned Fabuloso’s cap to make it safer for children, and hope other manufacturers will follow their lead.               

Fabuloso's new child-proof cap illustrates how Consumer Reports reader letters raise awareness about important product safety hazards, and contribute to prompting changes in the marketplace. We advocate contacting both the Consumer Products Safety Commission and Consumer Reports with product safety concerns. One of the important benefits of contacting Consumer Reports along with the CPSC is that our reader letters allow us to gather information on specific product brands, makes and models, such as Fabuloso, in order to analyze and address complaints.   

Consumer Reports receives a wide variety of letters concerning products such as air cleaners, popcorn, cars, and toothpaste.  A recent analysis of our reader letter database found the top 5 most common Consumer Reports reader letter topics are:

1. Lead in electrical cords
2. Microwave ovens turning/staying on
3. Light bulbs burning/melting
4. Toaster ovens staying on
5. Heating pad fires

We would like to thank our readers for providing us with important product safety information.  Let’s keep working together with the CPSC to help address product safety concerns!  You can email us at SafetyLetters@cro.consumer.org or write to us at 101 Truman  Avenue, Yonkers, New York,  10703-1057.

Unexpected dangers in the home

Don Mays, Consumer Reports’ Senior Director of Product Safety and Consumer Sciences, will be appearing on the Montel Williams Show today to talk about product-safety issues (check Montel’s web site to find out what time the show is on in your area).  Don’s goal -- and our mission -- is to empower consumers to protect themselves from preventable injury and illness.  Mays will address several important issues on the talk show. We also want to talk about these topics on this blog, because in our view, you can never talk enough about safety.

Kids and Cars: There are an alarming number of injuries and deaths involving cars that have nothing to do with traffic, according to Kids and Cars, the non-profit auto-safety group. Each week at least 3 children die and 175 more are injured because of deadly blind zones that obscure children when drivers back up, power windows that can be as lethal as guillotines to young children caught in their grip and other non-traffic incidents. Sadly, the majority of fatalities are under the age of three, and in 70% of the back-over fatalities, a parent or close relative was the driver behind the wheel.

Back-over incidents now account for nearly 30% of all non-traffic fatalities involving children, according to Kids and Cars and the deaths appear to be increasing annually.

Consumer Reports recommends never leaving children in the car unattended or the keys in the car when the children are nearby. Also, use the window safety lock, so kids can’t play with the windows. And if you're in the market for a new car, make the new, safer kind of window switch -- one that requires you to pull up on the switch to raise the window -- an important consideration. Windows with auto-reverse (think elevator doors) are even better.   

Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, continues to press for the installation of warning devices in cars to alert drivers when there is an obstacle behind their vehicle so they can avoid backing over it.  Rearview camaera are particualry effective. You can find more information on window entrapments and back-overs here.

Lawn Mower Backovers: It's not just cars that present a backover problem. In the U.S., there are an estimated 9,400 lawn mower-related injuries to children under 18 every year, and of the roughly 850 children injured annually from lawn mower run-overs or back-overs, about two-thirds are injured when a ride-on mower is backing up.  To help reduce the number of injuries from ride-on mower back-overs, Consumers Union has long sought a no-mow-in-reverse override switch on all riding mowers. This device would be located behind the ride-on mower operator so that he or she would be required to look behind the mower before mowing in reverse.

What you can do: Always look behind before mowing in reverse. And mow up, not parallel to slopes. Don't make U-turns at the end of downhill runs; wait until you are on level ground before turning.

More information on lawn mowers is available here. 

Blind Cord Strangulations: According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about one child per month dies after becoming entangled in a window blind cord--even though blind cord manufacturers stopped making pull cords ending in a loop over a decade ago.

What you can -- and should -- do: Repair or replace blinds, shades and draperies purchased before 2001. Consumers can receive a free repair kit from the Window Covering Safety Council via their Web site or by calling 1-800-506-4636.

Also: 

• Move all cribs, beds, furniture, and toys away from windows and window cords.
• Keep all window cords out of the reach of children.
• Make sure tasseled pull cords are short, and that continuous-loop cords are permanently anchored to the floor or wall.
• Consider installing cordless window coverings in children’s bedrooms and play areas.
• Never tie window blind cords or chains together because the knot creates a new loop which could strangle a young child.

More information on window blind cords is available from the CPSC. 

Furniture Tip-Overs: This blog has already spent some time talking about furniture tip-overs, so we'll be brief: In an average year, furniture tip-overs kill nine children, and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people, mostly children, are injured. Between 2000 and 2005, there have been more than 100 deaths from furniture and TV tip-overs and more than 80 percent have involved young children. 

How to guard against this: Make sure your furniture is stable on its own; anchor or attach it to the wall or floor. TVs should be placed on sturdy, low furniture and should be pushed back as far as possible from the front of their stands. And reduce a child’s temptation to climb, by removing toys, remote controls and other items from the tops of furniture and TV stands. You can find more information here.

Treadmills: According to a May 2005 CPSC report, 8.5% of sports activities and equipment injuries are from exercise activity and equipment, including falls from treadmills. However, falls are not the only cause of treadmill injuries, as children may be injured playing on or near the equipment as well. In fact, of the approximately 25,000 hospital-treated injuries associated with home-exercise equipment each year, as many as 8,700 affect children under 5. To help reduce the risk of falls from treadmills and treadmill injuries to children, Consumer Reports recommends that you keep children and pets away when using a treadmill. Most models have a tethered safety key to start the equipment. This safety key also stops the treadmill when pulled out, either at the end of your workout or if you should fall. Attach it to your clothing when using a treadmill and keep it out of reach of children when you're done.

Bob and Judy Lambert: Making furniture safer for all

 

Some people are paralyzed by tragedy; others are mobilized by it. Bob and Judy Lambert fit the latter category -- and for that, consumers should be grateful.
In January 2005, the Lamberts were moving into a new house in a Philadelphia suburb.  Their 3-year-old daughter Katie wandered into a bedroom and discovered a large 6-foot-high, mirrored wardrobe that had been left behind by the previous owner. Suddenly, there was a large crash. Judy rushed in to find Katie crushed beneath the fallen wardrobe.  Being a nurse, she attempted CPR. Katie was rushed to the emergency room, but didn’t survive. 
Within weeks of Katie’s death, the Lamberts went into action. The Katie Elise Lambert Foundation Web site was created to help educate consumers about the dangers of furniture tipover.  As the Web site notes, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 children are injured each year as the result of tipping furniture. One of the biggest problems is large TVs placed atop unsteady dressers, drawer chests and the like. Historically, about five children die annually from TV tipovers, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But for the first seven months of 2006, there have already been 10 reported fatalities.
But their Web site is only one part of the Lamberts’ multi-faceted safety campaign. The couple has also urged their local legislators to seek laws requiring tougher safety standards for furniture. Their goal is to get mandatory anchoring devices and warning labels posted on all assembled and ready-to-assemble furniture and major appliances. Currently, all such restraints and warning labels are voluntary.
This summer, Pennsylvania approved a law creating a statewide task force to review state laws and regulations and suggest ways to reduce child deaths. The law was introduced by Democrat Rep. Josh Shapiro after he met with Lamberts. Meanwhile, in the U.S. Congress, U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), is working on a bill that would require furniture to meet certain tipover standards and come with anchoring devices that can be used to safely secure furniture to walls.  The House bill  will also make ASTM International's furniture safety standard mandatory, once it has been strengthened to prevent tipovers.
Now, the Lamberts are part of the ASTM International subcommittee on Furniture Safety that is working to beef up the industry’s voluntary standards.  The Lamberts have been working with the subcommitteee to develop a revised standard, which specifies better test methods and stricter requirements for warning labels and anchoring devices. Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, is also on the subcommittee and has demonstrated the inadequacies of the current standard.  The revised standard will go to ballot soon. If consensus is reached among committee members, the standard will be published.  But consumer advocates like the Lamberts are outnumbered by furniture manufactures on this committee.  We expect that some manufacturers will try to stand in the way of affirming a revised standard.   
"Preventing any injuries and deaths to our children is our greatest hope," Bob Lambert said in an email. "No parent should ever have to watch their child die. No innocent life should be taken as the result of something so preventable."
What’s next for the Lamberts? A training video on how to properly tether furniture -- because many manufacturers are skeptical that consumers would install the tethering devices correctly even if they are provided with furniture.
Clearly, the Lamberts deserve to be singled out for this blog’s second "safety crusader" for their work in trying to make this world a lot safer for children.
Have a suggestion for other safety pioneers you’d like to see featured here? Let us know!

Ed Comeau: Campus fire fighter

For Ed Comeau, the die was cast when he went looking for cheap student housing.  He found the local fire house. Rent was free -- as long as he and seven other housemates served on the volunteer fire department.

That was in the early 1980s at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Ever since, Comeau has been hooked on fire safety and campus-fire safety in particular. Today, Comeau -- a civil engineer turned fire investigator -- heads the Center for Campus Fire Safety. He founded the Massachusetts-based group three years ago to track and, more importantly, reduce the number of fires on campuses around the country. 

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimates that U.S. fire departments respond to an average of 2,460 fires in dorms, fraternities, sororities, and barracks every year. Comeau says about 11 to 14 fatalities occur annually from campus fires. That's a small number compared to the 4,000 lives lost due to fires every year. But Comeau believes that by teaching college students safe fire practices, the annual number of fire fatalities can be substantially reduced.

“Ask a college student about fire safety and all they know is what they learned in elementary school: stop, drop and roll,” Comeau said in a recent telephone interview. “They’ve been taught what they need to do if a fire is imminent but never taught how to choose responsible, fire-safe housing.” That means stressing the importance of sprinklers, smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, the use of proper electrical extension cords and other things.    There are 17 million students now enrolled in college. “That’s the largest captive demographic that can be reached with fire safety messages,” Comeau noted. “If we can influence their behavior, we will see a dramatic change in fire safety.” 

Comeau's group says four out of five of the campus deaths occur in off-campus student housing, which is often rented one-and two- family homes. The group cites four common factors are behind these deaths:

No automatic fire sprinklers

Missing or disabled smoke alarms

Careless disposal of smoking materials

Impaired judgment from alcohol consumption 

  To reduce the risk of campus fires, check out our dorm-safety tips. Among the valuable tips: If you're living in an older building, check out the wiring and make sure it's been upgraded to handle all your electrical gear. Use a power strip with an overcurrent protector; it automatically shuts off power when too much current is being drawn. Install a smoke detector if your room doesn't have one and take all fire drills and alarms seriously. 

The Center for Campus Fire Safety also has some valuable advice as Comeau strives to reduce the number of fires, not just on campus but everywhere in the U.S.  At the same time, it lists a number of pertinent questions parents should ask about fire-safety programs in the schools their children are thinking about attending. For these efforts -- and because September is Campus Fire Safety Month -- Comeau becomes the first of this blog’s “safety crusaders.”  Have a suggestion for other safety pioneers you’d like to see featured here? Let us know!