CPSIA – Remember the Victims (If You Can Find Them)

Rumorville has it that a draft amendment to the CPSIA is pending in the next few days. As I contemplate what that might mean, I think back to where the CPSIA began and what has been achieved in its wake.

As an aside, there are actual poisoning risks in the world. As previously noted, the Japanese nuclear crisis seems pretty real to me. In the past 24 hours, the owner of the disabled Japanese reactors told the press that they evacuated one of the reactors (again) because the radiation level was now a mere 1o million times “normal” levels. As if to make the point that they are out of their depth, the Japanese utility later announced that it wasn’t really 10 million times too high, just 100,000 times. It’s always good to check your work.

In the U.S., we remain blissfully, almost quaintly obsessed with lead. Lead is THE problem we need to solve, apparently, according to the junior scientists who called themselves the 110th Congress. As far as I can tell, the CPSC has enthusiastically embraced this point of view.

Why?

Well, we have been told monotonously that there is NO safe level for lead. Commissioner Bob Adler wrote a 21-page treatise to “prove” the point (rebutted by yours truly here). And the consumer groups, ably represented by Don Mays of Consumer Union and Dana Best of the AAP, repeated the slogan in their February 16th testimony on the urgent need to reduce lead levels to 100 ppm. When the lead zealots speak of the dire need to protect against this “scourge”, they never speak in terms of CPSC injury statistics. That makes sense. As I have documented, there have been fewer lead injuries in a decade than the fingers on your right hand.

But isn’t this all about injuries? If there is REALLY no safe level for lead, shouldn’t it be easy to find victims? Ahem, the consumer groups state that lead harms “silently”. You can’t tell you are being harmed, you see! When questioned about “victims”, those few deigning to respond to my stupid questions (Jan Schakowsky and a staffer for a Senate Democrat) point to a meeting held in May 2008 with victims of lead poisoning. Nonetheless, they have never produced victim case histories and typically simply wag their fingers at me over lead poisoning.

I am no fan of lead or of lead poisoning, believe me, but I think I am entitled to an answer. If the object of the law is the prevention of childhood injuries, and if this May 2008 meeting was the critical basis for the push for the CPSIA, who were the victims at the meeting? How many victims were seen, and how were they poisoned?

Before we answer this question, it is important to note that the issue here is NOT lead-in-paint. As is well-known, lead-in-paint has been illegal for decades. Victims of lead-in-paint from products sold today are victims of violations of law. We are looking to find victims of lead-in-substrate. The over-arching regulation of lead-in-substrate is the source of the regulatory misery that befell ATVs, bicycles, pens, musical instruments, books, educational materials, rhinestones, t-shirts, shoes, and so on.

Do these victims exist? No lead zealot or CPSIA apologist has ever produced even one lead-in-substrate victim in three years. Were they at the May 2008 meeting? The Internet knows all. Parents of two childhood victims of lead-in-paint were present at the 2008 meeting, as identified in several press reports. See “Parents Visit Congress to ‘Get the Lead Out’ of Toys“, as well as “Congress vs. lobbyists over tainted toys” and this transcript of the Lou Dobbs Show (May 23, 2008) thoughtfully provided by the plaintiffs lawyer front Center for Justice and Democracy. There is no mention of any child harmed by lead-in-substrate. Two victims of lead-in-paint spurred this legislation. That’s it.

Without a demonstration that there are actual victims of lead-in-substrate in existence, the CPSIA has no proven factual basis. It’s all pure conjecture. Playing fast and loose with the facts, the lead zealots have SOLD the idea that this law was necessary, all without PROOF. Perhaps in the heady days of 2007/8, the legislators didn’t recognize the significance of the data problem. But today, members of the 112th Congress, facing the prospect of an amendment to fix the CPSIA, cannot afford the same ignorance. Constituents have been screaming for years now – and apparently with good reason.

The misuse of data, the zealots’ twisting of fear of lead-in-paint into a blind fear of everything, got us into this mess. Questions need to be asked as the new amendment is processed. Why are we doing this? Who is really being protected here?

In desperation, the consumer groups are saying just about anything to keep their law in place. Spreading fear of bicycle licking and trombone playing is certainly not beneath them. Dr. Dana Best sums up the consumer groups’ dubious, twisted “argument” for the need for a tightened CPSIA: “An object containing 77 ppm of lead is capable of raising a child’s blood level level to a level that would result in the loss of one IQ point. . . . Ingestion of an item containing 300 ppm of lead would result in the loss of almost four IQ points . . . . When averaged across even a modest population of children, the public health harm caused by lead is significant. Considering that there are about 75 million children in our nation, impacting one-half of one percent of all children would mean an exposure of 3.75 million children. . . . For one million children, [the loss of lifetime income from one IQ point per child] would total over $8.3 billion.” [Emphasis added]

Yet Dr. Best cannot deliver the goods to prove her farfetched theories and even more farfetched mathematics. Stating the danger in terms of 3.75 million possible victims is corrupt and immoral when you cannot deliver even one victim.

Let’s cross our fingers that Congress is resolved to not be fooled again. If there is a hearing, ask for real data, real case histories, real proof.

I can’t wait to hear about the kid who licked the ATV engine block and was poisoned by . . . lead? Give me a break.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Remember the Victims (If You Can Find Them)

CPSIA – Answers to Supplemental House Questions (Hearing of Feb. 17th)

This is my Response for the Record to questions posed by Rep. Mike Pompeo after the February 17th hearing held by the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade:

February 17, 2011
Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee:
“A Review of CPSIA and CPSC Resources”

Congressman Mike Pompeo

1. Did your company have to buy a copy of the F-963 standard? Why? How much did that cost?

Our company has purchased several copies of ASTM F963 over the years. According to the ASTM International website (http://www.astm.org/Standards/F963.htm), the current cost of F963 is $62, or $74 (redline version). [This means that the ASTM literally charges companies EXTRA to figure out what changed in this legally-mandated standard.] To my knowledge, this standard is only available from the ASTM. Ironically, even the CPSC is unable to provide access to this document (as acknowledged in this CPSC Powerpoint presentation http://www.cpsc.gov/BUSINFO/intl/toyweb2_en.pdf) which casts doubt on its ability to guide companies attempting to comply with the law. The lack of access and cost of access to this standard certainly makes compliance burdensome for small businesses.

The F963 standard has been updated regularly over the years, and we need to have access to the current version of the standard at all times. Until the CPSIA was enacted, the F963 standard was the tacit equivalent of a mandatory standard because the toy industry adopted it as a “voluntary” standard with the encouragement of the CPSC. At one time, voluntary standards were the preferred way the agency regulated many industries, including our industry. We have always used the F963 standard as a reference in product development and safety administration and frequently tested for compliance with the standard.

2. You’ve been dealing with all of the agency’s rules for the last few years. By my reckoning, an entrepreneur with, say, a good idea for a board game would have to pay to buy a copy of F-963 from ASTM (not a small price to pay for some small or start-up toymakers). Then, because the standard is literally dozens of pages long of densely spaced text, he’d have to hire a lawyer to tell which parts of the standard apply to his product. Then, he’d have to find a third-party test lab to test and certify a random sample of his actual production line for compliance with all of the F-963 requirements. And, if any product fails, you are basically back to the drawing board. And, of course, he’d have to do all this before ever selling a single toy. Do you think the next board game entrepreneur (e.g., Trivial Pursuit) might have a hard time getting off the ground under this regime? Has this agency effectively killed entrepreneurship in the toy market? Does a start-up company stand any chance of being able to navigate the CPSC’s new rules and regulations on its own?

The CPSIA has had the effective of creating new barriers of entry in the children’s product market, once one of America’s most entrepreneurial industries. The burdens are heavy in the toy industry but even worse in related industries like juvenile products. Large companies with steady cash flow enjoy considerable and valuable advantages over entrepreneurs who must put large sums of money at risk in their initial investment in compliance costs before receiving their first dollar of revenue. The effect of the CPSIA is one of picking winners and losers in affected markets. I question whether this is the appropriate role of the federal government in our markets.

We believe that these heavy costs will discourage investment in new products, by new entrants, by existing players and especially by small businesses. Recently, at the CPSC’s hearing on the looming 100 ppm lead standard, representatives of the bicycle industry noted that in the wake of the 300 ppm lead standard, many small bicycle manufacturers have already left the market and large companies cut their product lines considerably. I have long predicted a reduction in product diversity as a necessary consequence of the CPSIA. Other evidence of market contraction exists, as well. At this year’s ICPHSO, CPSC Acting Director of the Office of Compliance and Field Operations Robert (“Jay”) Howell noted the CPSC’s challenge in identifying a test lab that has or will agree to equip itself as a certified test lab for ATVs. Why? So many ATV manufacturers have stopped producing youth model ATVs under the effective ban by the CPSIA’s lead standards that testing labs can’t justify the capital investment to provide CPSIA compliance testing. Product diversity is declining all over the children’s product market.

Toymakers will experience the same depressing effect and yes, that means that the next Trivial Pursuit inventor may be washed out. We may never know because the absence of a new toy or novel game will be hard to detect in the ad-driven, promotional toy market. It is clear, however, that entrepreneurs are free to deploy their capital wherever they want – they are seeking returns on their capital – so the combination of high CPSIA compliance costs, high regulatory risk, high legal costs and a generally hostile regulatory environment seems unlikely to attract new entrants to the toy market. War stories will also discourage new entrants – the well-known experience of toymakers who have suffered under this regulatory regime.

As a practical matter, the rules and regulations put out by the CPSC to implement the CPSIA for toys are incomprehensible, not to mention incomplete. We are now 31 months into the CPSIA era, yet the CPSC has yet to promulgate a final phthalate standard or certify even one phthalates testing lab. EACH and EVERY toy must be “phthalate-free” but the CPSC has yet to tell us how to know it has achieved this goal. This means we are subject to the risk that they will invalidate all the work we have done since 2008. While this regulatory delay is simply outrageous, it is more likely proof of the defects in the CPSIA than a sign of failure by the CPSC. Even the largest companies have complained to the CPSC about the blizzard of rules and interpretations. One of great frustrations in attempting to comply with the new rules is that many CPSC legal interpretations have been given in private letters, orally in speeches or even in the form of voicemails. Access to such information may be critical but is obviously inaccessible to anyone not obsessively watching every minute of every video, reading every letter, attending every meeting or hearing and talking to every stakeholder in an attempt to master the breadth of this ever-morphing regulatory scheme.

3. Does the existence of a small business ombudsman at the agency solve the compliance problem?

The office of the Small Business Ombudsman serves a useful purpose as a friendly point of contact and possible advocate for small business within the agency. That said, there is no evidence that the office has power to make decisions, change policy or offer its own definitive interpretation of rules. For small businesses totally at a loss, the ombudsman is a good place to turn to for plain English answers to basic questions about rules. Notably, the office is not permitted to make decisions on behalf of the agency. The Ombudsman does not have the authority to make problems “go away”. For this reason, the ombudsman function appears to be the regulatory equivalent of a shoulder to cry on. The current ombudsman, Neil Cohen, has been a good friend to the small business community, but unfortunately, he doesn’t write the rules.

4. What problems do you anticipate occurring as a result of the public database?

We know that the public database will be administered on a post-it-and-forget-it basis. Based on our dealings with the agency, I believe that the agency will post all incidents unless a mistaken identity can be proven. As a consequence, we anticipate that the database will be allowed to be filled up with “incidents” that are conjectural, misleading or even proven WRONG. In the first and only filing against our company, an anonymous complaint accused one of our products of posing a small parts hazard. That accusation was based on an image viewed on a website – there is no indication that the filer had ever handled our product. Consequently, the filer had no reasonable basis for the small parts claim. As a matter of fact, we routinely test for small parts and have done so for years, and when we presented a valid CPSIA test report under F963 (and EN71, the European standard), we were told by the General Counsel of the CPSC that the claim would nevertheless be eligible to be published under current rules. Thus, we KNOW that the false and misleading filings will KNOWINGLY be published by the CPSC even if PROVEN false. We believe this flagrantly violates our basic right to due process and creates the potential for damaging “feeding frenzies” that can consume our products and brands.

Other claims may relate to “hazards” which affect a wide swath of products already well-known by regulators and industry. This presents many risks to industry and to brands. What will a consumer make of a “report of harm” relating to a general hazard and only one particular product? Is this a minor incident or a harbinger of a real risk? Should they stop using the product? Should they stop using the particular model or brand which is subject of the complaint? Given that many products may present the same hazard (for instance, that an electrical cord could pose a strangulation hazard), how does this information help consumers? Will consumers actually understand the issue and be able to put it into some sort of perspective? And when incidents accumulate, as they are likely to do, presumably the brands and models with the largest numbers in distribution will have more incidents even though, ironically, they may be better constructed and “safer” than the alternatives. Will consumers falsely conclude that the models with more incidents are less safe and turn to something that really is?

Responding to this type of complaint obviously creates a new and terrible dilemma for manufacturers. Should they expend resources to respond? Do they need to lay out “a brief” about the nature of the failure and why their product is named? Will people just view whatever they say as unreliable, self-serving information or will they really be able to internalize the data? As noted above, most people will not be able to put these incidents in any kind of perspective. The only thing we know for certain is that brands and companies will be the losers.

The public portrayal of the database belies the unverified nature of the filings. Notwithstanding the disclaimers made by the agency, even esteemed media outlets like The New York Times refer to the database as a “database of unsafe products”. Unsafe? That label presumes some kind of judgment or filter prior to filing, which even The New York Times must assume is being provided by the CPSC. Ironically, the CPSC is doing everything possible to avoid providing that service. The result may be disastrous for American manufacturers, importers, private labelers and retailers of children’s products. It will be yet another self-inflicted economic injury.

5. What can Congress do to return the agency to one that regulates on the basis of risk?

Congress should mandate that the CPSC use principles of risk assessment to make all decisions relating to regulation of children’s products. The legislatively-mandated use of judgment and proportionality will likely lead to better rulemaking and more regulatory common sense. It is the legislative banishing of the exercise of judgment that led to the devastation of the bicycle industry, the elimination of youth model ATVs from the market (even though those products owe their very existence to a concerted effort by the CPSC to protect children from injury on adult-sized ATVs), the banning of all products made of brass, the senseless and almost neurotic banning of rhinestones as embellishments on children’s clothing, shoes and jewelry, and so on. NONE of these changes in rules have been tied to even ONE avoided injury.

Congress should also mandate the use of principles of cost-benefit analysis by the agency in its rulemaking processes. Under the CPSIA, all considerations of economics have flown out the window with predictably disastrous results. We can operate our government better according to basic common sense notions of cost-benefit analysis.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Answers to Supplemental House Questions (Hearing of Feb. 17th)

CPSIA – My Answer to Slate.com on the CPSIA Database

Dear Mr. Noah,

I read with interest your March 8th article on the CPSC database entitled “Who’s Afraid of the CPSC?” and was disappointed at the inaccuracies in the piece and your blanket dismissal of the business community’s legitimate concerns about the database. The database has devolved into a divisive partisan issue simply because of the utter refusal of consumer groups and their Congressional allies to acknowledge the flaws in the database as well as the law that established it – the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).

I’ll try to address the inaccuracies one-by-one:

Database cost – $3 million or $29 million? The cost figure of $3 million sparked a public dispute between the CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum and her fellow Commissioner Anne Northup at a House hearing last month. In response to Ms. Tenenbaum’s testimony on the cost of the database, Ms. Northup testified that the figure of $3 million had never been shared with the CPSC Commission and that the only database cost figure she was familiar with was $29 million. Interestingly, in April 2010, the Associated Press reported, based on information provided by the CPSC, that the cost of the http://www.saferproducts.gov/ website would be about $20 million, and the CPSC apparently saw no reason to update the media with the good news that the cost had shriveled to $3 million until the February 2011 hearing. . . . Hmmm.

The supposedly noncontroversial CPSIA database. Why didn’t anyone kick up a fuss about the database in 2008? A better question is “Why didn’t Congress listen when the business community protested?” Here’s what I said in a letter to each Congressional conferee dated June 25, 2008: “While we support public notice of recalls, we oppose a national database of reports of injury, illness, death or risk of injury. This forum will not be subject to appropriate findings of fact and thus will be a forum subject to considerable abuse. In a society where tort lawsuits are an ever-present risk for all businesses, a risk that can wipe out a lifetime’s work in a heartbeat, the very real potential for abuse by competitors or mischief-makers far outweighs the public’s ‘right to know’. Once the CPSC has adjudicated a case appropriately, made a reasonable finding of fact and determined the right course of corrective action, public notice would be appropriate.”

I continued to try to make my point to CPSIA Congressional conferees in another letter dated July 21, 2008, just ahead of final consideration of the CPSIA: “CPSC Searchable Database: The well-intentioned idea for complete safety transparency is an open invitation to mischief makers. This is a real threat to our business, as we know from hard experience. The better way is to let the CPSC filter this data first. Please remember, even YouTube will take down videos on request. The proposed law won’t give defenseless toy companies the same recourse as YouTube. Is that an appropriate way to regulate an entire industry?”

It wasn’t only me. Many others in the business community opposed the creation of a database that would contain inaccurate or misleading accusations and complaints. That’s the story of the CPSIA in a nutshell – no one was listening when the law was originally drafted, and now three years later, we are fighting City Hall to restore common sense to federal safety law. Please consider the assertion that consumers really need this database, that it is essential to their children’s safety. In fact, there are many places on the Internet where consumers can and do post their experiences without controversy. Why would a federal database be a greater cause for concern? Well, for one thing, this one is called “SaferProducts.gov” and is sponsored by the federal government. Notwithstanding the lawyer language disclaimers all over the website, it is crystal clear that the public will place a lot of credence in these postings. After all, why would our federal government allow misleading or inaccurate information to be posted on a website called SaferProducts.gov? Ms. Tenenbaum is famous for her defense of “dot gov” websites: “I say don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, except what you read on Web sites that end in dot gov.” [Keynote speech at ICPHSO, February 17, 2010] She may not be the only one who feels this way.

The NHTSA database exists; ergo a CPSIA database is a good idea? The NHTSA database can be distinguished in several important ways: (a) auto accidents are a leading cause of death in this country (consumer products are not), (b) every use of automobiles is known to be hazardous and the risk to human life from reckless use of cars is obviously magnified (not true for consumer products), (c) the auto industry is one of the largest components of our entire economy – we all use cars and many of us owe our livelihoods to automobiles in one way or the other (the average sale of consumer products is far less than a car), and (d) at all levels, the auto industry is highly consolidated among a relatively small number of massive companies that are well-prepared for litigation and regulatory issues (consumer products is not a consolidated market and there are many small companies involved in the trade). I think GM, Ford, Toyota and other multi-billion dollar automakers can handle the burden and risk of a database of consumer deaths and serious injuries from use of their products. Our family business, Learning Resources, on the other hand, ain’t no GM or Toyota. The NHTSA database is NOT an appropriate precedent for consumer products for all of the foregoing reasons.

“One of the ironies in Pompeo and others screaming bloody murder that the database will kill jobs is that most of the appliances likely to get dinged in the database won’t even be American products.” This remark completely misses the point, unfortunately. It is American companies that are going to be hurt by the misinformation in the database, whether those companies are manufacturers, importers, private labelers or retailers. Even worse, thousands of American small businesses are going to be put at risk with no practical means to defend themselves. Is this the “American Way” at work? Who will pay when jobs are lost from companies shifting away from this market or dropping products to limit exposure to liability? This is just going to be another self-inflicted economic injury from misguided and overzealous regulation.

Whether the product is made in China, the U.S. or India, it should not matter from a safety perspective. Companies must ensure that they market safe and appropriate products no matter where the products are made. The reality is that every product can break, and accidents and other bad things happen to good people. The database will be unforgiving and if filled with post-it-and-forget-it garbage, will harm innocent victims – American companies that employ your neighbors and make products for your schools. Unqualified and unverified complaints on SaferProducts.gov WILL induce consumers to take our products away from children – pending a recall that may never be forthcoming . . . because nothing’s wrong.

Chairman Tenenbaum has publicly encouraged consumers to rely on the postings in the database – to draw conclusions on the likelihood of future injury. This is quite alarming, given that Ms. Tenenbaum also testified in a Congressional hearing in February that the agency will likely post unverified or inaccurate information to the database. She admits that this information will be faulty. As she said in testimony, “that’s what the rub is”.

Claims of inaccuracies are low in the soft launch. Given the short life of the database in its test phase and the small population of registered users, reports of few data problems must be greeted with skepticism. Less than 1000 companies have registered with the CPSC for the database, an absurdly small percentage of the number of companies whose products will be in the database. Taking into account that many consumer product companies (such as Disney) will need to register numerous brands, product lines and corporate divisions to ensure that the right data flows to the right paper pusher, the current registrations are even paltrier. If companies are not registered, it is unlikely they are even aware of the soft launch, let alone that there may be inaccurate claims against their products being sponsored by the federal government.

Sadly, we are likely to confirm that the CPSC’s faulty processes are damaging companies only AFTER the damage is done. Let’s not forget that the agency is all set to launch a big “public awareness” campaign for the new database – in other words, the federal government will soon be beating the bushes for consumer complaint submissions. As usual, consumer advocates hype uncertain and unquantifiable losses (someone somewhere might not know about something that COULD have been in the database and later be injured) to distract Congress and the media from the certain losses that will befall companies with damaged reputations. Good for plaintiff lawyers but maybe no one else.

Our small company in Illinois has already experienced a materially inaccurate submission – in the very first “complaint” we faced – and were unable to block it from the database. The anonymous posting concerned a consumer’s “feelings” about one of our products based on a photograph she found on the Internet. Unfortunately, she was clearly wrong and we could prove it. The CPSC wasn’t impressed by our valid CPSIA test reports or photographic evidence of the consumer’s error. I can safely assure you that misleading and inaccurate claims will not only be submitted to the database and but will be posted by the CPSC knowing full well that the claims are untrue. I wrote about my experiences in my blog.

I hope you will reconsider your views on the CPSIA database and weigh more carefully the legitimate concerns of businesses serving the children’s marketplace. We are in this business for a reason – we are devoted to making children’s lives BETTER. The new database will not further our mission, nor will a database filled with garbage benefit consumers. We can do better, and we MUST do better.

Sincerely,

Richard Woldenberg
Chairman
Learning Resources, Inc.
Vernon Hills, IL
My blog: http://www.learningresourcesinc.blogspot.com/

Read more here:
CPSIA – My Answer to Slate.com on the CPSIA Database

CPSIA – Congress and CPSC in the Clouds . . . .

I have heard from an old friend today, a resale shop owner. The store owner is as frustrated as anyone by the CPSIA and has some interesting observations. The store owner’s point is that it is utterly impractical for store personnel to be up-to-date on recalls or to manage recall issues on a day-to-day basis. Think recalled baby monitors with “remedies” like a new warning label. Think also of the national chain of resale shops that told us that many of their MANAGERS are paid $8 per hour. Can you get a sense of the brilliance of Congress’ master plan yet?

The store owner sent me a picture worth a thousand words:

The store owner: “The photo I’ve attached is of my six-inch binder of printouts for every recall on children’s items since the early 90′s. The papers on the floor are the new recalls since September 2010. I printed those last week, so I need to go back and print the newer ones. I take this binder to all my events and strive to search it thoroughly to keep recalled items out of our events. I’m going shopping today to pick up a second six-inch binder as I’m obviously going to need it.” [Emphasis added]

Sounds very practical. I am sure Scott Wolfson and Sean Oberle have some useful tips for this store owner on how to manage all this data. It is worth NOTING that rifling through 20 years of CPSC recalls is not the store owner’s main business – their business is selling gently-used merchandise – but it probably seems like it nowadays.

The store owner is also a victim of unscrupulous “gaming” by a competitor who seeks to capitalize on fear and the ambitions of local politicians to put pressure on him/her. The store owner: “I’m no longer comfortable posting publicly about CPSIA since a local children’s resale full-time store owner has told several of her shoppers that she’s planning to call the [local] Attorney General to come investigate my next seasonal consignment event to be sure I’m in compliance with CPSIA. Since I don’t have XRF vision, there is no way to prove I’m in compliance with the instructions to not resell anything over the lead limits, despite the fact that I’m not required to test. I still don’t have a clue what do to about phthalates, but I’ve banned all bath books, bath toys, & teething toys from our events anyway.” [Emphasis added]

There’s a stimulus plan for you. . . .

Did you catch the store owner referring to any topic relating to safety, such as injuries or concern for the health of children? Nope. It isn’t the concern of the competing store owner or the local Attorney General, either. This is about officious bureaucracy, paperwork for paperwork’s sake, all to satisfy a neurotic anxiety without a basis in FACT.

I used to ask “Where are the victims?” The zealots in the last three years have been able to produce exactly ZERO injured children from lead or phthalates in children’s products. So I guess I have to nominate my friend the store owner – a prototypical victim of this law.

Job well done, Congress and CPSC!

Read more here:
CPSIA – Congress and CPSC in the Clouds . . . .

CPSIA – Wingnut or Dingbat, You Make the Call!

Hey, it’s her words – is Deborah Blum a “wingnut” or a “dingbat”? In her blogpost from earlier today, Ms. Blum takes Inez Tenenbaum to task for her sins in not clamping down HARDER on American businesses stupid enough to continue selling children’s products. Ms. Blum is apparently a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin.

As an aside, I must say I had the mildest twinge of sympathy for Ms. Tenenbaum after I read Blum’s blogpost. This is not my usual emotion when thinking about the CPSC Chairman, but heck, there’s no winning for her, is there? I don’t want her job.

Ms. Blum’s contention is so asinine that it hardly bears repeating except that apparently Twitter is alive with tweets and re-tweets of her blogpost. Her thesis is that Ms. Tenenbaum tolerates excessive amounts of lead in children’s products and explains it thus:

“So I’ve come up with a nice little conspiracy theory. You and your business partners are tired of low-income consumers. They can only afford dirt-cheap crap from China, their purchases don’t add up enough to float the balance sheets. So, of course, you aren’t protecting them with tougher regulations. Of course, American corporations aren’t investing in safer products. Slowly but surely, one piece of jewelry, one pair of plastic boots at a time, you’re getting rid of everyone who doesn’t matter enough to be kept safe. Sure it sounds crazy. But is it any crazier than importing poisoned goods for almost ten years without looking for alternatives or better safety systems? I don’t think so. So who’s the wingnut now?” [Emphasis added]

Hey, Ms. Blum, I can answer that one – YOU are the wingnut.

Pot calling the kettle black, I think Ms. Blum shows why some blogs must be “discounted”. She makes about every possible reactive error in assessing the lead “problem” in children’s products:

• She confuses CPSC lead recalls (according to her, 289 since 2001 – “more than 30 recalls every single year”) with lead injuries. Hysteria over the POSSIBILITY of injury without bothering to assess the PROBABILITY of injury is how we got into this mess in the first place. I am sorry Ms. Blum is so easily rattled but isn’t the data on injuries relevant? I have documented one reported death and three unverified injuries from lead in this period of time. Should we turn our lives upside down to reduce that risk further? This only amplifies my call for a National Xanax Fund.
• She reasons from headlines but shows little mastery of the actual facts. She cites the recall of McDonald’s Shrek glasses (“McDonald’s recalled more than 12 million “Shrek 3″ glasses contaminated with the toxic metal cadmium (and also a little lead)”) but fails to note that the CSPC has acknowledged in WRITING that the glasses were safe. She also cites the AP’s recent report of lead and cadmium in enamel baked on certain glasses, but fails to note that the AP also admitted that the health risk was low or that the presence of these heavy metals is LEGAL in enamels of this type. Congress did that, and how could we EVER doubt Congress?!
• Ms. Blum repeats the junk science notion that if lead is bad in some cases, it MUST be bad in all cases. She absurdly compares lead in enamel with lead in drinking water, and then asks why there aren’t standards to protect adults from the dangers of lead in enamels. Ms. Blum, can I see your turnip truck?
• Ms. Blum plays the China card, a jingoistic line of reasoning used by blamestormers. We make many of our products in China, and I consider this kind of finger pointing a contemporary form of racism. I have a lot of experience with Chinese sources, and have good reason to trust our trading partners. Ms. Blum regrettably has no idea what she is talking about when she blames “China”, as though we all buy from the government of China. We do business with other privately-owned companies, not “China”. It may make the world seem less complex to equate “cheap” with “poor quality” or “dangerous”. It is not accurate, however.

If the Deborah Blums of the world get the upper hand in this regulatory mess, they will solve the lead problem, I am sure. It won’t be a solution you will like, nor will it be effective. Lead was here before Deborah Blum roamed the Earth and will here after she’s gone – it’s an ELEMENT, after all. No law can banish it, and no economy can survive if lead must be eliminated in all forms from all products, even in unharmful trace amounts.

She will succeed, however, in killing off all companies that make children’s products. That will solve the “problem” she is apparently obsessed with, but will create other, more serious ones.

Let’s hope we don’t continue to slide down this slippery slope led by people who can’t decide if they are wingnuts or dingbats. It’s a tough call, I’ll admit. She might be both.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Wingnut or Dingbat, You Make the Call!

CPSIA – Component Testing Rule Comment Letter

August 3, 2010

Todd A. Stevenson
Director, Office of the Secretary
Room 820
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
4330 East West Highway
Bethesda, Maryland 20814

Agency: Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

Re: Docket No. CPSC–2010-0037 Conditions and Requirements for Testing Component Parts of Consumer Products.

Dear Mr. Stevenson:

I am hereby submitting comments in response to the Solicitation of Comments on the Conditions and Requirements for Testing Component Parts of Consumer Products (Docket No. CPSC–2010–0037) published in the Federal Register on May 20, 2010 (the “Proposed Rule”).

This request for comments comes after, among other things, a two-day workshop held at the CPSC on December 10-11, 2009. Our company incurred the expense of sending three people (all panelists on multiple panels) to attend this “sold out” event which was purportedly to solicit stakeholder feedback on this rule and the so-called “15 Month Rule” (also up for comment today). There is little evidence from the Federal Register that any of our feedback was taken or possibly even heard. I have lost track of how many comment letters I have filed, panels or hearings I have appeared at and essays or letters I have written about the CPSIA and these issues. So far, my comments have added up to . . . nothing. Nevertheless, I am filing this letter in the vain hope that perhaps this will be my lucky day and you may listen to me, finally.

I would like to make some general comments first.

a. Some Positives in the Proposed Rule. I am in favor of the concept of component testing and applaud the Commission for taking steps to make it a reality, however flawed. In addition, I am also enthusiastic about composite testing. Regrettably, however, the devil is in the details.

b. CPSC Data Demonstrates that Risk is Low, so the Proposed Rule does not Need to be so Strict. I have analyzed the recall data published on the CPSC website and determined that from 1999 – 2010, the CPSC can account for ONE DEATH and THREE ASSERTED INJURIES from lead or lead-in-paint. If the goal of these rulemakings is to reduce deaths and injuries from lead, then these data must be borne in mind. With so few incidents involving lead injury of any kind in children’s products (less than occurs on AN AVERAGE DAY from swimming pools and spas in the U.S.), there is no justification for building such an ornate rule for something simple and logical like component testing or composite testing. Likewise, incidents of fraud in testing are equally infrequent and in any event, already addressed by other statutes. Congress did not require this complicated regulatory scheme, and the data cannot justify it.

c. The Proposed Rule Puts Compliance First, Before Safety. This rule seems to place a very high emphasis on the need to comply, as opposed to the need to make children safer. One is not necessarily the equivalent of the other. My favorite example is our company’s record of compliance. Founded in 1984, our company has recalled a grand total of 130 pieces in its history, all recovered, out of perhaps one billion pieces sold. Not bad. Were we to meet the myriad requirements of this rule, I cannot fathom that our products would be safer. Does all that extra compliance benefit anyone? It certainly will cost a lot (we pay, you don’t). As I read your rule, I wondered why you didn’t list the wire transfer instructions for the top testing companies. You might as well . . . . Still, the casual waste of our resources cannot make anyone safer – they were already completely safe.

Safety is the reason the CPSC exists. This document fails because it confuses the desire to powerfully enforce the CPSIA with actually making people safer. The only thing that may be accomplished is business death for many companies, principally small ones. Swashbuckling enforcement may make great headlines but no one will be any safer. Compliance is not safety.

d. Science Has Apparently Been Rendered Moot at the CPSC. While I accept that Congress has banned certain phthalates in toys, I do not accept that the ban is a SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSION. It is legislation, not science. Notably, the CPSC has twice investigated phthalates and held that phthalates were safe in toys. Yet, on page 28213 in the Federal Register, the Proposed Rule discusses the “risk” presented by a product that might have a violative concentration of phthalates in a component, but with an overall concentration that wouldn’t violate the ban. It goes on to assert that a component-based rule is “more protective of human health”, as though the agency had reached the scientific conclusion that phthalates were dangerous – which is not true. Re-characterizing the legislative ban as an assessment of “risk” may appear to legitimize your rule, but it is certainly not an accurate statement of the historical position of the agency. I object to the rule’s equating of a ban by politicians to a scientific judgment. Science is under enough assault without the stamp of approval of the CPSC announcing its death.

My specific comments on this proposal:

1. Component Testing Looks Better Than It Is. I wish I felt we (or anyone else) would use component testing extensively in the future. There are several reasons why this option will be of little use to anyone, particularly the small companies that it was intended to benefit. [Companies with enough scale may find the Proposed Rule useful – one of the many ironies of the CPSIA is that its principal beneficiaries may be the companies that prompted its passage.]

a. Limited Market Availability for Component Certificates. While some high volume components of children’s products may quickly be tested to meet these requirements, many other kinds of components are not likely to be tested:

i. Low volume components
ii. Components made in small lots
iii. Components made by small suppliers (many fabrics)
iv. Components which derive only a tiny percentage of revenues from regulated products or which principally cater to other industries (e.g., paper clips or aluminum foil in a science kit)

Unfortunately, it appears to me that the logic of this rule is that if we can be certain that some certificates will be widely available (e.g., paint, plastic pellets), therefore all other certificates will be available. That’s plainly ridiculous.

b. Complexity. The subdividing of compliance testing into component parts and the whole, some tests done on parts and some on the whole, with tests of varying dates substituting from time to time, is simply a mindboggling mess. I cannot imagine that this can be successfully managed on any scale (how many products need to take advantage of this rule before test reports develop big and inconsistent holes?). And how will retailers be able to interpret this patchwork quilt of tests? This scheme will be self-defeating on all levels.

Add to this the requirement that components need to be traceable, and you basically rendered the component testing opportunity moot. Of course, I am presuming that industry will take your rules seriously. To me, it’s completely inconceivable that anyone will build your traceability system. [Traceability will not raise revenues, only mindless complexity, and as noted above, cannot conceivably improve safety.] If you take these rules seriously, you will cry, laugh/scream – or walk away. The paperwork required for this exercise is well beyond almost all companies’ capabilities. [Does the CPSC have ANY tangible evidence that its requirements can be met by anyone . . . other than Mattel and Wal-Mart? Presumably, no one at the agency living in the real world thinks that traceability rules can be met by the typical Handmade Toy Alliance member, or other small businesses like ours.]

c. Unrealistic Expectations on Manufacturing Control and Traceability. To take advantage of this rule, a manufacturer must take responsibility at the sub-micro-level for manufacturing quality. Let’s recall for a moment that we are not making drug treatments here, nor are we building the Space Shuttle. We are making simple plastic toys and games, children’s shoes, pens, shirts, books, educational materials and so on. Consider this instruction from your new rule: “The manufacturer must exercise due care that the manufacturing process does not add a prohibited chemical from an untested source, such as the material hopper, regrind equipment, or other equipment used in the assembly of the finished product.” Our company has several hundred vendors producing thousands of SKUs – do you honestly believe we could possibly manage how all these independent companies wash out their molding machines or manage their regrinding operations? Is this some kind of sick joke?

By the way, this verbiage will end the use of recycled materials in children’s products. This is completely unjustified for safety reasons and is certainly very unfriendly to the environment. As noted above, your agency’s responsibility is to manage safety. You have no basis in fact for asserting that these theoretical sources of lead are or could constitute a public safety risk.

d. Liability Risk. The Proposed Rule goes to great length to ram home the message that all the risk is on our shoulders. The monotonously repetitive use of the term “due care” throughout this document makes abundantly clear that the CPSC is perfecting a myriad of claims to be made against any and all manufacturers of children’s products when it suits the purpose of the agency. Many of the claims may be perfected with the agency’s 20-20 hindsight. The Proposed Rule minces few words on this preservation of rights: “The above information is needed so that, if noncomplying products are found, the Commission can use this information to determine whether a finished product certifier, component part certifier, or third party conformity assessment body is not complying with the appropriate requirements.” Under the Proposed Rule, even a missing piece of paper can be the basis of charge of failed due care. A fear of criminal charges seems realistic.

Will aggravating letter writers be the first to suffer under this hammer? The answer is – it’s entirely up to YOU under your rule. Small companies will see how the deck is stacked against them and steer far from the component testing option (if they understand the obtuse wording of the rule).

2. If Few Companies Can or Will Use Component Testing, Has the Agency Provided “Relief”? Of course, the answer is NO. The Proposed Rule may look like good policy, but if the practical impact of the rule is that few people can or will take advantage of it, it is simple window-dressing. The impact on small businesses, exemplified by the well-known and sympathetic Handmade Toy Alliance, will be severe. They are not the only ones in need of help, either. If small companies like HTA members cannot take advantage of these rules in large part or would be too scared to take a chance in the face of the awesome display of governmental power in the rule’s terms, then they will suffer and shrink. I would note that the Notice on the “15 Month Rule” explains how a failure to protect small companies could play out badly (see “Caveats and Possible Market Reactions to Third Party Testing Requirements” on page 28358). Those negative impacts could result from a failure of policy here, too.

3. Maintenance of Records for the Life of a Product Plus Five Years Is Unduly Burdensome (Not to Mention Pointless). Please consider our case: We still produce certain items from our original product line in 1984. Clocks don’t go out of style in education, even if Tickle Me Elmo and Furby last only one year. The requirement that we must retain records for the life of the product plus five years could theoretically be forever in our case. Perhaps the CPSC can provide us free unlimited warehouse space for all these records. In any event, our case also makes clear how pointless this requirement is. We have only had one recall in 26 years, which we successfully administered without the assistance or guidance of the thousands of pages of rules and legislations that befell us under the CPSIA. How, precisely, will decades of records improve the public weal in OUR case? Your rule is very good at spending our money, our resources and our time, but doesn’t make a reasoned connection to safety in any way. We are not Mattel and in any event, they don’t define the market. Had you listened to us in December 2009 at your workshop, you would know this already.

4. Composite Testing Rule for Paint LOWERS the Lead Standard to Sub-trace Levels. In yet another example of overly risk-averse rulemaking, the agency’s new composite testing rule for paints requires that lead content must never exceed that for any individual component paint in the composite. This slices the 90 ppm limit by two-thirds for a three-paint sample and by 75% for a four-paint sample. This super-stringent rule ensures that it is literally a gamble to use composite testing – so why would anyone bother? Even more bothersome, since the new policy of the agency is to impose strict liability for lead-in-paint violations, this new rule demonstrates the ascendency of the debunked notion that there is “no safe level for lead”. If the agency really wants to take this position, it should not permit composite testing for paints. Too risky . . . .

5. The Regulatory Flexibility Analysis is Flawed and Self-Justifying. The analysis justifying this Proposed Rule is a “best case” scenario, and takes none of the foregoing into account. If in fact the rule will hard or impossible to use, or will create too many legal risks or recordkeeping burdens and thus go largely unused, the reasoning in this section will be completely inapplicable.

6. The Burden of Recordkeeping is FAR GREATER than Asserted in the Proposed Rule. At our company, we produce about 1500 “catalog” items and several thousand other SKUs and custom products through a network of hundreds of factories in various countries. We do not control these factories – they are generally family businesses like our company, and are independent of us. Typically, we provide only a small share of annual revenue of any of our factories and thus have limited leverage over their business practices. Like many small businesses, we have a very limited infrastructure in place to supervise factories “on the ground”, although it is worth noting that our safety record indicates that our business methods have worked well for more than two decades.

To implement the recordkeeping set forth in this rule, I estimate that we would have to spend $50,000 – $100,000 in software development expenses to store and manage the desired records. In addition, we would need to expand our staff significantly. To reach out to all of our factories, negotiate and monitor many new business practices, will take a significant increase in staff. I posit that we would need to open an Asian office with as many as 5-10 local employees. A Chinese office would cost us at least $500,000 per annum. In addition, we would have to increase our clerical and management staff in the U.S. to help with data input, software management, project management, audits, vendor relations and general management. This would cost us at least $250,000 per annum. We anticipate that this intrusion on the business practices of our vendors would cost us business relationships and would lead to significant cost increases. The total cost of these disruptions would add another $500,000 or more per annum. It is not inconceivable that we ALONE could incur annual expenses of $1.5 million and certainly at least 10 man-years of labor (more than 20,000 hours) to comply with these rules. There are THOUSANDS of companies affected by this rule. We estimate that the assessment of cost and man-hours in the Paperwork Reduction Act section of the Proposed Rule is LOW by a factor of 100x-5,000x.

I would suggest that this rule be greatly simplified by making the following changes:

a. Eliminating the Requirement for Traceability Recordkeeping. As noted above, this ornate rule architecture is completely inappropriate for the minimal, almost non-existent threat, demonstrated by the CPSC’s own injury data. Recordkeeping requirements should minimized or dropped altogether.

b. Encourage the Exercise of Business Judgment. The presumption that only the CPSC (or Congress) can make sound judgments when considering safety issues is simply not supported by the data. Again, our company is a good example of that – we scrupulously maintained our safety record without the CPSC’s oversight, coercion or even encouragement since 1984. The concept of “business judgment” is well-defined in U.S. common law and has real meaning under the law. I think the concept of using components supported by GCCs is simple enough. Given that the restrictions on lead are clear under the CPSIA, why not let businesses exercise their judgment on how to meet those requirements and then measure them on their success in doing so? What is to be gained by inserting the CPSC into all aspects of how we conduct business? We were doing just fine before you arrived on the scene.

Given the few lead injuries noted in the CPSC’s historical data, the agency could save its scarce resources and remain effective as a safety administrator by focusing on known safety issues and incidents and leave the vast majority of law-abiding and safety-conscious companies ALONE. The data suggests that higher and higher mountains of regulations will never reduce injuries from the historically miniscule levels documented on the CPSC website.

c. Allow Composite Testing Using the Overall Concentration as the Pass/Fail Measure. Again, this is justifiable based on the historically minimal risk posed by the regulated substances. The already low lead levels specified in the CPSIA have not reduced injuries or deaths from the negligible levels that predated it. Since the number of recalls is so dramatically affected by agency policy (e.g., strict liability or not, how recalls are accounted for, etc.), the only reliable measure of the effectiveness of policy is injuries. Composite testing holds the promise of real savings to the many law-abiding companies affected by the CPSIA. Loosen the noose and they may actually save some money.

Component testing can be a simple and effective way to lower costs, but a different approach is necessary to get to that result. A sharp reconsideration of the Proposed Rule will be required to achieve this goal.

Thank you for considering my views on this important subject.

Sincerely,

Richard Woldenberg
Chairman
Learning Resources, Inc.
380 North Fairway Drive
Vernon Hills, IL 60061

Read more here:
CPSIA – Component Testing Rule Comment Letter

CPSIA – Why Hasn’t Data Changed Opinions at the CPSC?

I have recently published numerous blogs on CPSC recall data documenting the dearth of injuries and deaths from lead in the past decade. I am certainly not indifferent to the suffering of any victim, however, I note that data on injuries is a way to measure the urgency of the threat. There has been one death and three asserted injuries in the last eleven years from lead. We are a country of 300 million-plus and have a $15 trillion dollar economy – presumably, we need to prioritize.

I have also provided CPSC data on injuries and deaths from other hazards, such as cadmium (zero), pool drains (very low, but greater than lead), phthalates (zero) and pool and spa (extremely high, more in an average day than in a decade for lead, phthalates and cadmium put together). In fact, I documented the distribution of injuries and deaths among all recalled children’s products over an 11-year period. At one death and three unverified injuries, lead comes in last among all recall categories with more than eight recalls over 11 years (lead and lead-in-paint accounted for 248 of 899 total recalls in the surveyed period of time). Literally every significant hazard facing children in consumer products is worse and much more dangerous than lead according to the CPSC’s own data.

I have also shown that the data on recalls publicized by the CPSC tends to magnify the scale of lead recalls, making the recalls seem more threatening and the implied hazard more urgent than they really are. Among other things, the quantity of recalled products typically (if not always) includes inventory in the possession of the manufacturer. This inventory NEVER MADE IT TO THE MARKET. In addition, recall data also includes product still on the shelf at retailers. This inventory, which was sold by the manufacturer to the retailer, was never sold to consumers. Inventory in the possession of the manufacturer, its factories or its retailers has no conceivable potential to harm a child. The amount of product in the hands of consumers could be tiny. Please consider these facts when evaluating the claims of consumer groups on the “poor” effectiveness of recalls. The math gets all tangled up, doesn’t it?

Call me crazy, but this seems like some rather shocking data. The deaths and injuries from lead and phthalates are so small that they are trumped in a single day by pool and spa deaths and injuries. [The reported deaths and serious injuries from pools and spas since Memorial Day, at least 210, are AT LEAST FIFTY TIMES THE NUMBER OF DEATHS FROM LEAD IN THE LAST ELEVEN YEARS. In other words, it will take more than 500 years for lead to produce as many deaths and serious injuries as the last 53 days from pools and spas (if the lead death and injury rate doesn't taper off).]

And yet the CPSC seems to have no interest in this data, their OWN data. Why? Well, the best I can say is that they believe every life is precious and thus, economics cannot be considered when designing a response to the hazard. I did not invent this view of the consumer group-dominated Commission – I asked this very question of a person in a position to know, and got this answer. So there you go.

Does this hold water, that economics are irrelevant and should never be considered? First, on the relevance of economics, I think that’s a silly proposition. Of course economics matters. Please don’t feign shock or disgust. Let’s do an exercise: How much shall we spend to save a life? A child died from swallowing a lead charm on a single bracelet several years ago. This is the lone reported death from lead or lead-in-paint from a consumer product in at least 11 years and has been cited as a justification for the CPSIA maelstrom. In this space, I have adopted a proxy estimate of $5.6 billion in annual CPSIA compliance costs for the children’s product industry (based on a submission of the HTA to support their Congressional testimony).

So, is $5.6 billion the “right” amount to spend annually to prevent the next loss of life? Sure, you say, spend the $5.6 billion each year, every life is precious. Okay, does the cumulative spend of $61.9 billion over 11 years (to match the period in which the one death occurred) sound a bit extreme? Can you think of anything else that might be a better use of $61.9 billion? [Like a new national highway system? A new electrical grid? A few more cruise missiles? A few months of national health care?] I would note that $62 billion is double the provisional losses of BP from the Gulf oil spill. That’s a lot of coconuts, if you ask me.

Should we spend $61.9 billion on every cause of death? What about causes of death that are “worse”, meaning that loss of life is greater? Should we spend proportionately? If our resources are limited (I used to think that was relevant but lately, who knows?), how should we allocate our limited dollars? Is it okay to prioritize? Does lead make the cut if we try to allocate rationally?

It is worth noting that the value of a life or an injury is a heavily-litigated subject. It is a staple of tort litigation to estimate damages by assessing the economic value of a life or an injury. The U.S. government also engages in the same analysis. Certain agencies are forbidden by law to issue regulations that do not show an economic profit, that is, the cost of the regulation must be outweighed by its economic benefits. [Money spent or saved by the public versus the government is not relevant to this analysis - a dollar's a dollar no matter who spends it.]

The benefits of the regulation are calculated by assessing the economic value of lives and injuries. To regulate otherwise is economically irrational – which is where the CPSC seems to be. More to the point, economic irrationality is against the weight of U.S. jurisprudence, not to mention laws limiting the ability of the government to issue regulations. Hate to sound trendy, but it is Big Government completely out of control to contend that lives are “priceless” and to assert that the cost to avoid injury or death should not be limited by economic considerations. Please note that the EPA assesses the economic “value” of a life at $6.1 million. For even more perspective, the EPA says that one IQ point lost to lead is worth $8,346. CPSIA compliance costs are not less than $5.6 billion EACH YEAR. Do the math.

Okay, this is bordering on insulting your intelligence. Yet, astoundingly, the CPSC doesn’t get it. What about the behavior of the CPSC itself – do they ever consider economics? Again, at the risk of insulting your intelligence, of course they do. For one thing, they themselves have limited resources. They can’t do everything they want, and have to make choices. They have a BUDGET. They can’t hire everyone they want, can’t inspect everything, can’t process every claim immediately and so on. They also make practical judgments on some things. I reported recently the tarring the Commission received for making a practical judgment about how to implement the pool drain law. In that case, they chose to agree with the recommendations of industry, which is heresy in some circles . Certain members of Congress live in those circles . . . . No doubt the savaging of the Commission over that minor practical judgment will have the intended effect of eliminating whatever shreds of common sense or backbone extant at the CPSC and the Commission. Perhaps this is the end of their consideration of economics . . . .

Where does this leave us? Come on, guys, right where we were for the last two years! We continue to rail against this awful law, and the CPSC gets progressively more and more stone deaf. I feel increasingly like I am mumbling to myself, especially when they won’t respond to their own data or other data-driven rational arguments. Given that the Dems have made their name by being totally deaf to the legitimate concerns of industry, what choices are left to us? I am turning more of my energies to the 2010 Midterm elections. I hope you will also do what you can to change the dynamic in Washington. You’ve seen what these people have done in the last 18 months. Ready for more?

I’m not. And I am doing something about it.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Why Hasn’t Data Changed Opinions at the CPSC?

CPSIA – Numbers Don’t Lie (Update No. 1)

I have received a lot of feedback on my data on injuries from lead since I published it on Thursday. Some of the comments deserve further exploration.

a. Did anyone have this data previously? I think the answer is NO. I have heard from inside the CPSC that this kind of data analysis is not being done. The data is nowhere to be found, except here. Recent testimony by consumer advocates and Congressional zealots is strangely bereft of details, just long on invective. Don’t we deserve better?

The hysteria over lead-in-paint recalls, combined with other recalls that were unrelated created such a lynch mob atmosphere in Congress that the only data that registered was data that supported the mob’s POV. The actual data is therefore something of a surprise.

Let’s look at the four reported lead injuries for a moment. The one death from lead, the famous incident in Minnesota where Jarnell Brown swallowed a lead charm off a Reebok bracelet, is well-known.

Injury no. 1: L.M. Becker recall (vending machine jewelry, Sept. 10, 2003): “The firm received one report of a child who swallowed the necklace’s pendant, which reportedly resulted in high blood lead levels.”

Injury no. 2: Four company recall (vending machine jewelry, July 8, 2004): “CPSC has received one report of lead poisoning when a child swallowed a piece of toy jewelry containing lead that was previously recalled. No reports of injury or illness have been received for the recalled products announced today.” THIS REFERS TO THE L.M. BECKER “INJURY” ABOVE.

Injury no. 3: Munrie Furniture, Inc. (cribs and matching furniture, December 23, 2008): “Munrie has received one report of a child ingesting the paint. The child was diagnosed with lead poisoning.”

Injury no. 4: Allreds Design (bracelets and clips, February 17, 2010): “Allreds Design received one report of a 10-month-old child who was treated by a physician for elevated lead levels.”

Do these three injuries (one injury is double-counted) have anything in common? I assert that causation is not proven in these cases. Yes, lead poisoning is alleged, however there is no evidence that the cause has been determined definitively. READ what the CPSC said – the connection to the defective children’s product is loose or even conjectural (“reportedly resulted in high blood lead levels”). Remember car seats that gave kids lead poisoning? Toxic car seats were a hoax. The injury data is flimsy at best. And this is all the evidence there is of injury from lead in children’s products in the last 11 years of recalls.

The Democrats and consumer groups would rather eat broken glass that admit that the lead poisoning scare is a hoax. They want to run our businesses – so there’s no conceding that all this economic damage cannot be traced to anything other than ONE TRAGIC ACCIDENT IN AN ELEVEN YEAR PERIOD. Uno, that’s it, in our country of 300 million where thousands of kids die every year for various reasons.

Well, at least we know our companies will die in a valiant cause, to reduce the ten-year death rate from lead in children’s products from one to zero . . . .

b. Was the CPSC really broken? This is Mr. Waxman’s assertion, as expressed in his opening remarks at the April 29 hearing. So it must be true, right?

I hope to provide more data on this topic soon. In the meantime, I will simply pass along the comments of a friend who is in the CPSC community, namely that Congress underfunded the CPSC for 20 years, leading to severely constrained budgets and hiring. Consider these quotes from a 2007 Businessweek article about the CPSC:

“Yet while the CPSC has never been more vital, through much of its 33-year history the agency has been chronically understaffed and underfunded. Overseeing 400 recalls a year, most at companies’ requests, the CPSC’s compliance team has less time to initiate its own investigations, which tend to reveal the most serious risks. . . . Growing workload and shrinking resources have left many disheartened. From a peak of nearly 1,000 in 1980, CPSC’s head count has fallen to 400. . . . What can be done to help the agency? In a word, money. It’s been 17 years since Congress thoroughly reviewed the CPSC’s resources and needs, says Nord.”

So, let’s see, Congress has been tightfisted with budgets for this little agency for many years, starving it of needed resources and headcount, effectively shrinking it over a 17-year period to a withered state, and then after an outbreak of large-scale toy recalls (by and large injury-free), Congress blames the agency for inattention to its mission and severely rewrites the law to punish the marketplace and the agency itself.

After all, why blame the entity responsible for the problem in the first place, Congress? Much easier to blame the agency!

c. Wow, those were a LOT of recalls? Is that the tip of the iceberg? As far as I can tell, the answer is that most of the iceberg is a mirage. Experienced CPSC hands note that the recall notices are prepared by the press office at the CPSC and are meant to attract attention and headlines. Big numbers, if defensible, are best suited to demonstrate that the cop is on the beat. A few tricks of the trade is to add in as many sources of “recalled” items as possible. I believe that as many as 60% (that’s no typo) of all recalled units NEVER WERE SOLD. I would simply observe that if they were never sold, they never had the potential to cause injury.

Second, the population of recalled items is always inflated out of an abundance of caution whenever there is ANY doubt as to the identity of dangerous products. In other words, if a company sold one bad lot but also sold nine good lots, all indistinguishable, the recall would be announced for all ten lots, even though there is NO dispute that nine of the lots are absolutely fine.

Without this insight, recall statistics might be alarming, at least in a sense. Actually, the recalls are something of a mirage, an illusion of legions of bad products that really don’t exist or were never sold. How can we verify this? Among other things, injury statistics back up this assertion. If we had 300 million units of dangerous products in circulation, the injury statistics of 2381 injuries in 11 years seems pretty low to me. Assuming an average time in the marketplace of three years per recalled item, this implies an annual injury rate of 0.026% (from all causes, not simply lead). If the products are in the market for only one year on average, the annual injury rate is still only 0.077%. In other words, in a worst case scenario, you can safely use RECALLED children’s products 99.92% of the time. And you would presumably be even safer with NON-RECALLED products.

Oooo, scary.

Think of it this way: There are about 3 billion toys sold in the U.S. annually, according to Alan Hassenfeld, former CEO of Hasbro. Over 11 years, that 33 billion toys. [Considering that "Children's Products" includes far more than just toys, the pool of 11 years of sales is probably north of 500 billion units.] Were you to assume that all 899 recalls in my data were toys, the pool of 308 million units recalled would represent 0.93% of all toys sold in that period. So, if 0.93% is safe 99.92% of the time, and the rest presumably safe at a higher rate (let’s say 99.999%), then the blended safety of all toys is 99.99%. The result is probably higher than that.

Numbers, numbers, do they matter?

We are spending not less than $5.6 billion per annum to “fix” this 99.99%+ safe problem. In an effort to create a much “safer” environment for kids, the helpful folks at the CPSC have produced literally thousands of pages of documents, rules and instructions to govern our businesses down to the tiniest detail. Unfortunately . . . the assertion that anyone will be safer CANNOT be proven as a matter of mathematics.

A neurotic bill administered by people who no longer can assess what is and is not safe is a danger to our society. The data proves it. Who should be held accountable? Congress? The Dems? Inez Tenenbaum? Some or all of the above.

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CPSIA – Numbers Don’t Lie (Update No. 1)

CPSIA – Numbers Don’t Lie

One of my greatest frustrations with the CPSIA debate is its highly emotional tenor. It seems to me that the debate trades more in passion than in analysis. Since the big issue is safety, namely incidents of injury and death among children from consumer products, the resolution should depend on statistics and science – but the discussion NEVER goes there. Solutions based on a pure heart and good intentions won’t solve a numbers problem. Many people involved in this law have little background in science. It is also clear that some people are playing fast and loose with data. That’s a problem.

Many people use data relating to lead and childhood injuries that play on basic human emotions. After all, who would want another child to be injured, much less killed? That truism is justification for the CPSIA as “necessity”, notwithstanding possible “unintended consequences”. Even the mere mention of cost and effectiveness discredits opponents of the law.

A convenient example of this phenomenon is Henry Waxman’s opening statement at last week’s hearing. He called out three separate incidents of injury to kids: “Just over four years ago, a little boy named Jarnell Brown died of lead poisoning when he swallowed a metal charm that came with a pair of kids’ shoes. A year later, in 2007, two children became comatose and had to be hospitalized because of a children’s toy that turned out to have a toxic drug in it. That same year, millions of cribs were recalled for a simple defect that had caused multiple infant deaths.“

These three groupings of injuries are unrelated and derive from radically different hazards. Jarnell Brown swallowed a jewelry charm made of lead. The two kids were affected by AquaDots, an unprecedented, one-of-a-kind chemical toy defect. Crib injuries are obviously of a different nature and involve a separately regulated category of child (infants) subject to unique risks. Despite the wildly disparate data, he concludes: “The bottom line was clear: our system for keeping children safe was broken.“

While I think that the Cubs are pretty mediocre and so are the Bulls, I don’t think Chicago is broken. This is apples-and-oranges. So goes the CPSIA debate.

Let me be clear, I am not saying Waxman INTENDED to mislead with his remarks – no, in fact this is how most people have treated data in support of the law. Few if anyone uses actual balanced injury or hazard data. Even the fear mongers’ standard of “there’s no safe level for lead” is almost obviously untrue but it strikes an emotional chord and is, at one level, hard to refute. Clearly, sprinkling lead on your bowl of cereal in the morning isn’t recommended. That said, it is equally clear that lead is very infrequently deadly and since we all consume lead daily by breathing, eating and drinking, it must be tolerable (at a minimum) at certain dosage levels. Thus there has to be a “safe” level for lead – or else we’d all be as dumb as a box of rocks. I consider to be a simple observation.

So what’s the truth? Data on recalls and the hazards uncovered by the CPSC is frankly hard to come by. I went through the exercise of preparing a 25-month analysis of lead-in-paint back in February 2009 and published my data. The data were great but frankly, I needed more. So I set out to prepare a much broader survey of recall data so we could really talk numbers. I have attached a data analysis of the 899 CPSC recalls of Children’s Products between March 5, 1999 and April 15, 2010. This is slightly over 11 years of data and while it is a somewhat arbitrary period, I consider it statistically significant and useful to reason from.

A few caveats: I prepared this data with the assistance of several people and spent quite a bit of time cleaning it up. It is good data, but almost certainly inaccurate in some respect or respects. This is not intentional and I would certainly welcome notice of any errors you may find. The source of the data is posted recall notices on the CPSC website. The categorization of products and hazards might be considered quirky and could be misleading if you do not look at the details. However, overall, this is the best data I know of for an analysis of injuries and deaths from Children’s Products.

The rationale behind this analysis is that official CPSC recall data over an 11-year period reflects the policies, judgment and decisions of the agency and is revealing about what the agency thought was and was not important during that period of time.

The spreadsheet has three worksheets. You have complete access to ALL of my data. I have incorporated hyperlinks to EVERY recall in the spreadsheet, so you can dig deeper if you are so inclined. The first sheet, entitled “Total by Category” is sorted by Product Category. The second sheet, entitled “Total by Year” sorts the same data by Recall Date. The final sheet, entitled “Summary by Product” includes FOUR ANALYSES pulled from the first two sheets. There is recall statistical data by (i) product category by hazard, (ii) hazard by product category, (iii) year by hazard, and (iv) hazard by year. Four slices of the data, never before seen.

Some interesting facts:

• Grand Total Recalls: 899
• Grand Total Children’s Products Recalled: 3,128
• Grand Total Units Recalled: 308,697,297 (remember, this is over 11 years)
• Grand Total Injuries to Kids from Recalled Products: 2,381
• Grand Total Deaths from Recalled Products: 35

Okay, let’s unpack this data. First of all, this is inclusive of ALL Children’s Products. That would include the recall of 150 million units of vending machine jewelry in 2004. It also includes all crib, bassinet, play pen and stroller recalls. Even common toy box recalls are included. You are welcome to react emotionally to these gross numbers, but please remember, this is a mishmash of 11 years of data at the macro level. We need to probe more deeply for real insights.

For perspective on these data, please consider CDC data on childhood mortality: the current mortality rate for kids age 1-4 is 4,631 per annum (leading causes of death: unintentional injuries and congenital malformations) and for kids age 5-14 is 6,149 per annum (leading causes of death: unintentional injuries and cancer). I believe unintentional injuries are principally car accidents. Anyhow, this implies an 11-year mortality rate of 118,580. Notably the annual mortality rates exclude kids 0-1. I don’t have those numbers and haven’t bothered to look for them. You get the picture. The CPSC has accounted for 35 deaths in the same period.

It bears noting that these statistics suggest that our markets are in fact rather safe. Injuries to children and deaths associated with Children’s Products, while unacceptably high, are just 0.03% of the overall mortality statistics. We can and should continue to focus on improvements, but we should also have some perspective on our challenge. Polishing the apple is different than crisis management.

To further clarify the injury/death problem from lead, let’s look at the breakout of injuries and deaths by hazard. Unlike my February 2009 analysis, this data shows all hazards and all recalls in the 11-year period. Please note that some of these hazards are very closely associated with one or two product categories. Lead is closely associated with jewelry. Lead-in-paint is largely associated with toys but touches almost all product categories. Falling and entrapment is a largely infant category. Strangulation is mainly clothing (certainly of late, with all the drawstring recalls) and infant products. With this data, you can see what comes from where.

Injuries and deaths from Children’s Products in this period break down as follows:

• Brake Failure 0, 0
• Burns 74, 0
• Cadmium 0, 0
• Choking 150, 3
• Collision 2, 0
• Falling/entrapment 1803, 17
• Fire hazard 4, 0
• Illness 0, 0
• Impalement 0, 0
• Laceration 284, 0
• Lead 3, 1 [The only death from lead in 11 years is Jarnell Brown, mentioned above.]
• Lead-in-paint 1, 0 [That's right, ONE INJURY in 11 years, no deaths.]
• Magnets 3, 0
• Strangulation 26, 7
• Suffocation 29, 7

A quick question: if you were running the CPSC and had access to this data, what would you focus on? Interestingly, if you look at lead and lead-in-paint recalls in the early years of this data, you will see something that seems somehow quaint now, namely very few recalls and in small quantities for lead and lead-in-paint.

• 1999: 0 recalls [partial year]
• 2000: 0 recalls
• 2001: 5 recalls
• 2002: 3 recalls
• 2003: 4 recalls
• 2004: 6 recalls
• 2005: 10 recalls
• 2006: 16 recalls
• 2007: 98 recalls
• 2008: 65 recalls
• 2009: 29 recalls
• 2010: 11 recalls [partial year]

Was the agency napping . . . or was the CPSC behaving rationally? What were they doing when they could have been catching lead-in-paint violations? Check my analysis: they were focusing on choking, falling/entrapment and laceration, presumably because these hazards were causing BY FAR the most injuries and deaths. Lead and lead-in-paint produced almost no injuries or deaths for 11 years. It is also worth noting in 2007, that under withering political and populist pressure, the agency changed its recall policy on lead and lead-in-paint to strict liability (every violation was recalled). In the early part of the decade, many lead violations were dealt with privately by the agency, making statistical comparisons impossible (and giving the incorrect impression of laxity by the agency at that time).

The data is also useful to give perspective on the effectiveness of the CPSIA’s application of regulatory and corporate resources to new safety activities. In conjunction with last week’s hearing, the HTA filed an economic analysis prepared by an independent safety consultant that projects aggregate annual CPSIA testing costs of $5.6 billion. Personally, I think that number is very low for the all-in economic impact from this law, but for the sake of argument, let’s use it as THE number for regulatory compliance. So we are all going to spend $5.6 billion ANNUALLY to comply with this law regulating lead and phthalates. Over an 11-year period, ignoring inflation, our costs will be $61.6 billion. This expenditure is presumably designed to reduce the incidents of lead poisoning and phthalates. We have accounted for four injuries and one death. That’s what our $61.6 billion is aimed at.

Consider this: if we really want to keep kids safe, we should be somewhat indifferent to HOW they are injured – we just want to protect them from harm. Thus, a bump on the head, a broken arm and lead poisoning are all the same, equally bad. So what if we spent at the same rate on ALL injuries and death identified in CPSC recalls, at the projected CPSIA spend rate? Our cost would be $61.6 billion / 5 (11-year lead and lead-in-paint injuries and deaths) X 2416 (total injuries and deaths in the same period). Sitting down? The total compliance cost we would bear over 11 years would be $29.8 trillion ($2.7 trillion per year). The current national debt is $12.95 trillion. Please also consider that our annual safety expenditures would exceed the expected receipts of the federal government this year ($2.4 trillion). If the federal government only funded us, the government would still run a $300 billion deficit this year.

Call me a worrywart, but I think that kind of safety spending is a bit over the top.

The debate over safety has dramatic economic implications. Safety is a principal concern of the industries serving children’s markets, of course, but if we are crippled economically we won’t be around to make safe products. There is a sensible balance that can be achieved. The data suggests that the CPSC actually knows what it’s doing (at least it did before it became a political football) and can properly allocate its resources.

If the CPSC were entitled to focus on real safety risks (based on data), not the phobias of politicians and consumer groups, and if they could be convinced to stop trying to run our businesses for us, I think we could reduce and refocus safety spending and become much more effective in improving safety.

Numbers don’t lie. It’s time to reassess and amend the CPSIA. And if the Dems won’t let us do that, it’s time to reassess them and Congress as a whole.

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CPSIA – Numbers Don’t Lie

CPSIA – Waxman Amendment, Tenenbaum and “Openness”

Everyone knows that the CPSC under Chairman Inez Tenenbaum is all about openness and transparency, right? She told us about her closely held principles of open government again and again. [If there is any doubt, see below for her many public statements on this topic. I probably missed more than a few, too – please forgive me.] Apparently, this is part of her plan to restore confidence in the CPSC.

Let’s not obsess over her vote with the self-proclaimed “Prince of Darkness”, Commissioner Bob Adler, to prevent a public discussion by the five CPSC Commissioners of the controversial January 15 report to Congress. I am sure she was really trying to be open, but I must be too dumb to understand it.

And then there is the Waxman Amendment 2.0. The anti-business sleight of hand in the pending law has been much discussed in this space. The Waxman Amendment is quite provocative. Many groups have submitted comments to Waxman’s staff, as well as two Commissioners (Nord and Northup). Or is it four Commissioners?

I have reported that Tenenbaum and Adler submitted joint comments on the Waxman Amendment. Their letter was apparently not signed. The only place you can find it, to my knowledge, is in my blog. I believe that senior CPSC officials who asked Ms. Tenenbaum’s office for a copy of it were REFUSED. Is that “open” and “transparent”? You be the judge. By the way, you weren’t supposed to see it, either.

I am told Ms. Tenenbaum previously submitted a secret list to Waxman of 20 changes she wanted in the law, but this document never surfaced. On March 23, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to disclose this and other documents relating to these Commissioners’ interactions with Congress on this bill and finally received an acknowledgement from the CPSC on April 1. No joke. Yet I have not received any documents to date. The Tenenbaum and Adler letter is still a thing of mystery.

And now I understand that in response to press inquiries about the mystery comment letter, the CPSC is admitting the authorship of the two Democrats. No explanation is being given for the secrecy, nor for its absence from the CPSC website.

How very transparent. Is this building your confidence in fairness and openness at the CPSC? Perhaps this is the new Washington Mr. Obama is installing. No more business as usual!

Mr. Nixon would be so proud. I wonder if there is an enemies list, too. . . .

In chronological order, the remarks of Ms. Tenenbaum on transparency and openness (emphasis added):

[I particularly like nos. 6 and 12, btw.]

1. [This one is from the agency itself, but it's a good warm-up.] U.S. CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION INFORMATION QUALITY GUIDELINES :

“CPSC also achieves transparency through wide dissemination of its information. Most reports and other data products are available both as printed and electronic documents. They are announced on the CPSC web site and most electronic versions can be accessed and downloaded directly from the web site.”

2. Inez Tenenbaum Sworn In As New Chairman of U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, July 9, 2009:

“Ms. Tenenbaum identified three major areas of focus for her common sense approach to serving as Chairman. ‘First, I want CPSC to be more accessible and transparent to parents and consumers. By creating an electronic database of product incident reports that consumers can search and by collaborating with state and local agencies and consumer groups, we can give the public confidence that CPSC is working openly and in their best interest,’ she stated.”

3. Testimony of Inez M. Tenenbaum Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation United States Senate, June 16, 2009:

“Consistent with the President Obama’s approach to governance, if confirmed as Chairman, I will ensure that the Commission is operated in an open, transparent, and collaborative way and in a manner worthy of the American people. . . . If confirmed, I commit to you that under my leadership the Commission will operate in an open, fair, and evenhanded manner and will invite participation by the public, consumer advocacy organizations, and industry.”

4. Remarks of Chairman Inez Tenenbaum at APEC Regulator Dialogue on Toy Safety, August 1, 2009:

“Enforcement is actually one of my three top priorities as Chairman, along with government transparency and consumer education and advocacy.”

5. Statement of Inez Tenenbaum Chairman U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection “The Consumer Product Safety Commission: Current Issues and a Vision for the Future”, September 10, 2009:

“In my first two months leading the CPSC, I have focused on three key goals: transparency and openness to those we serve; a renewed focus on education and advocacy to all American consumers; and fair, but firm enforcement of the product safety laws we oversee.”

6. Chairman’s Welcome for CPSC 2.0 Press Releases # 09-346, September 22, 2009 (transcript):

“Hello, I’m Inez Tenenbaum, Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In my first hours as Chairman, I spoke frankly to families and consumers across the country. I said that as the leader of this important safety agency, I was committed to creating an open and transparent CPSC. We have kept our word.“

7. Chairman Tenenbaum’s Speech at AHAM’s Product Safety and Liability Conference, Washington, DC, October 12, 2009:

“I have said this previously and I want to be clear with all of you – I support the creation of the database, as I believe it furthers the vision of creating a more transparent CPSC and a more informed consuming public.”

8. Chairman Inez Tenenbaum’s Keynote Address, 3rd CPSC-AQSIQ Safety Summit, Wuxi, China, October 21, 2009:

“The spirit of cooperation and dialogue with which we are opening this Summit reflects the philosophy that I have as a regulator. I embrace open government, information sharing with all stakeholders, and a commitment to finding mutual interests.”

9. Chairman Inez Tenenbaum, Keynote Address, ICPHSO/International Cooperation on Product Safety, Toronto, Canada, October 28, 2009:

“With the passage of CPSIA, the proposed product safety legislation introduced here in Canada, , it is more important than ever for industry, consumer groups, and government to work together. We must assure that there is a transparent and fair handling of the vast responsibilities we are being given. Serving as the Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission puts me in a position to oversee a reshaping of consumer product safety issues affecting the global community, and I take my responsibilities seriously.”

10. CPSC Chairman Inez M. Tenenbaum Keynote Address via Video Recording, APEC Toy Safety Initiative Open Dialogue on Toy Safety, January 12, 2010 – Hong Kong:

“I am as committed to transparency as I am to enforcement and as we go forward, I hope all of you will work closely with us through our comments process and open proceedings. It is essential that we find common ground through dialogue on ‘building safety into toys and children’s products.’”

11. CPSC Chairman Inez M. Tenenbaum TIA International Toy Fair, February 15, 2010 – New York:

“I am as committed to transparency as I am to enforcement and as we go forward, I hope all of you will work closely with us through our comments process and open proceedings.”

12. Chairman Tenenbaum ICPHSO Keynote Address, February 17, 2010 – Washington, DC:

“As many of you have heard me say before, I am a believer in open government. It is integral to the Administration’s efforts to change the culture in Washington, and I believe it is integral to changing perceptions of the CPSC. Over these past months, I have made the Commission as accessible to the public as any time in its history. At the same time, I have made myself accessible to both industry and consumer groups. I will continue to have an open door in the years ahead.”

13. Chairman Tenenbaum JPMA Summit Keynote Address, March 9, 2010 – Washington, DC:

“After a tumultuous 2007 and 2008, we made 2009 a year of change at CPSC:
• change that brought new staff and new thinking,
• change that brought new partners and a return to openness, and
• change that has brought renewed confidence to parents.”

14. Chairman Tenenbaum Consumer Federation of America Keynote Address, March 11, 2010 – Washington, DC:

“After a tumultuous 2007 and 2008, we made 2009 a year of change at CPSC:
• change that took us from having only 385 employees in 2008 to having more than 500 in 2010 – and we are still hiring – our goal is to reach 530,
• change that brought new powers and a return to openness . . . .”

15. Chairman Tenenbaum AAFA Executive Summit, Friday, March 12, 2010 – Washington, DC:

“After a tumultuous 2007 and 2008 – we made 2009 a year of change at CPSC:
• change that brought new staff and new thinking as we grow from 385 employees in 2008 to 530 by the end of this year,
• change that brought new partners and a return to openness . . . .

Over these past months, I have made the Commission as accessible to the public as any time in its history. Our public meetings are online – you can watch our Commission meetings every Wednesday morning, — we have hosted public workshops to collect input from the public on major issues and our staff members are presenting useful information to groups like this around the country. At the same time, I have made myself accessible to associations like AAFA and to consumer groups. I will continue to have an open door in the years ahead.”

Read more here:
CPSIA – Waxman Amendment, Tenenbaum and “Openness”

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