CPSIA – Making It Up as We Go Along

743 days have passed since ANY Democrat in Congress did ANYTHING to help us on the CPSIA. There are 68 days left until Election Day.

The CPSC today whacked education company Lakeshore Learning Materials with a recall of Magnetic Maze products. This recall involved 18,500 units of a total of five products sold over a 18-month period. Was this recall justified? Well, anything goes these days but consider the facts:

There have been no reported injuries from this “hazard” – namely loose magnets. The company has received ten reports of loose magnets. The CPSC sums up the “hazard” this way:

“The magnetic maze board’s plastic wand can separate and expose a magnet that can be a choking hazard to children. Also, if a child has more than one of these toys and the magnets detach and are swallowed, the magnets can attract each other and cause intestinal perforations or blockages, which can be fatal.” [Emphasis added]

Before we unpack this baloney, please consider for the umpteenth time where the CPSC’s LEGAL BASIS for issuing a recall comes from. The authority to recall consumer products derives from the FHSA which restricts the agency’s authority to “imminent hazards”. Section 12(a) of the FHSA provides this definition: “As used in this section, and hereinafter in this Act, the term ‘imminently hazardous consumer product’ means a consumer product which presents imminent and unreasonable risk of death, serious illness, or severe personal injury.” [Emphasis added]

So the CPSC must reach the legal conclusion that this product creates an IMMINENT AND UNREASONABLE RISK of death, serious injury or severe personal injury to order a recall. Did they meet that standard here?

The CPSC provides two explanations for this recall, namely small parts/choking hazards and intestinal perforations from ingestion of magnets. Of course, the latter hazard is derived from a fear of Magnetix, a notorious recall in the bad zone of 2007/8. There is no indication that these magnets were strong magnets as found in the Magnetix product.

A quick glance at this product confirms that the product is DESIGNED with small parts. These products were certainly tested for compliance with law (we know these folks well, and they are exemplary corporate citizens who are exceptionally careful about legal compliance and safety). Therefore, the assertion that the presence of small parts in this product somehow constitutes a violation of law or good practice just doesn’t hold water. I could use stronger language, but I think this is a nonsense excuse.

And what about intestinal perforations? That’s pretty icky, shouldn’t we be intolerant of loose magnets? Well, the CPSC states the conditions under which these magnets could be a problem:

Step 1: The child must have more than one recalled product. [You need two products to have two magnets! There are 18,500 defective units in the world, let's not forget - a total universe of 18,500 magnets.]

Step 2: TWO magnets must fall out, one from each unit. [Ten loose magnets in the world are known. As noted above, there is no indication that these magnets are dangerously strong enough to perforate anything. A niggling detail?]

Step 3: An idiot child must choose to EAT these two yummy loose magnets in one sitting.

This has never happened, apparently. Could it happen?

This is well-beyond farfetched, but there you go. At today’s CPSC, the agency is apparently no longer permitted by the politicians who run the place to reason or to assess any form of risk. If the risk can be put into words, that seems to make it real enough to punish any company severely. No doubt this recall exposes Lakeshore to grievous penalties, too. And for what? Can anyone make the case that this makes anyone ACTUALLY safer? And, call me picky, but is this a case of “imminent and unreasonable risk of death, serious illness, or severe personal injury”? I believe this speaks for itself – the answer is no.

Remember, these regulators work for us, the citizens of this country. As the regulators confuse and scramble the expectations of industry and consumers, as they disregard their enabling legislation to chart a path that makes sense only to them – something important is lost. Is that acceptable? Not to me. Remember this on November 2nd. Let’s hope it’s not too late by then.

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CPSIA – Making It Up as We Go Along

GUEST BLOG – BOSTON GLOBE WRITER TAKES NOTICE OF ALL THOSE CPSC RECALLS

Rick has blogged in this space about how the onslaught of recalls by the CPSC is numbing to consumers. Boston Globe writer Sylvia Pagán Westphal has taken notice in a column over the weekend:

Boston Globe

The safety scare
Separate dangerous products from those that pose little risk
By Sylvia Pagán Westphal | July 7, 2010

IF YOU’RE the parent of a young child and want to be very scared, don’t waste time looking for horror movies on TV. Just go to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website for child product recalls. You won’t be able to sleep for days.

The site features an interminable selection of common children’s products that have been recalled. Some of the depictions are downright gruesome: in cases of defective cribs, for example, there are pictures of baby dolls with necks pinned down between rails, or of their little faces pressed against a mattress, as if suffocating. The intent is, to be sure — for I see no other reason to scare the wits out of an unsuspecting, Internet-roaming mother — to jolt parents into action if they own one of the products.

One recent afternoon, I was clicking through the recalls page when I realized, to my dismay, that during my 9-year stint as a parent I have owned several of the featured items. My colorful rainforest-themed baby swing was there, and so was one of my cribs. The baby sling I used with my son was recalled after three babies suffocated in 2009. The kinds of bath seats I used (and loved) with my daughter aren’t sold anymore, following various recalls.

I never found out about these announcements. Had I taken the time to register each product I might have heard from the manufacturers, but I didn’t do it, and neither do most of the parents I know. Some pediatricians’ offices and stores post selected recall sheets, and there is an e-mail list from Consumer Product Safety Commission one can opt into, but with over 100 of these announcements per year it’s hard to keep track of the information.

Part of the problem is that recall announcements don’t explicitly distinguish between problems with products that are truly dangerous and defective versus products with sub-optimal design that, when used properly, pose little risk. For example, the commission recently recalled a bed because one child got his head stuck in its storage compartment. Not to take away from that kid’s pain, but I have numerous compartments in my home where my children’s heads would fit if they tried hard enough.

In a way, some of the announcements appear to be directed at shielding us from our own parental incompetence. Millions of baby bath seats and walkers are no longer sold due to drownings and falls suffered by babies who were basically left unsupervised. The recent high-profile recalls of drop-side cribs were prompted by deaths that, in some cases, were caused by cribs that were incorrectly put together or were subjected to shoddy home repairs.

Don’t get me wrong: to the extent that these recalls remove poorly designed products from the market the efforts should be praised. If motels and hotels are forced to carry safer cribs, that’s a good thing. But the Consumer Product Safety Commission and other safety advocacy groups should be mindful of putting each recall into perspective, so as not to unnecessarily scare the public. For example, the multiple recalls (and likely national ban) on drop-side cribs comes after 32 documented deaths over the last 10 years and millions of cribs sold. That’s surely 32 deaths too many, but more children die each year choking on food.

There is a real downside to a system that feeds into our nation’s growing safety paranoia, which isn’t healthy either. Many of my overseas friends have a hard time understanding our obsession with safety — we put locks on our toilet seats, cover the corners of tables with rubber guards, and use hand sanitizer with ever-intensifying zeal. Taking that baby walker away, just like covering the table corners, is a bit like avoiding air travel for fear of crashing, while still driving a car every day. The world is a very dangerous place to raise a child. Leave the house and there are hard edges, pointy rocks, and steep inclines everywhere. As much as we’d like to, we just can’t childproof those too.

Sylvia Pagán Westphal is a regular contributor to the Globe opinion pages.

Posted to Rick’s Blog by Alliance for Children’s Product Safety Staff

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GUEST BLOG – BOSTON GLOBE WRITER TAKES NOTICE OF ALL THOSE CPSC RECALLS

CPSIA – CPSC Sets Its Sights On the Real Menace to Society . . . Buttons

In yesterday’s USA Today article entitled “Lead testing can be costly for mom and pop toy shops“, Scott Wolfson, Director of Public Affairs at the CPSC, cited the “positive effects” of the CPSIA on the market. What were those “positive effects” that Wolfson bragged about to the national media? “[Wolfson] notes global suppliers are choosing lead-free buttons for adult and children’s clothing, which is safer for everyone and helps shift the burden from small businesses to suppliers up the line. He says Tenenbaum is trying ‘to find the right balance between compliance and not putting companies out of business.’”

Let’s be clear here, Wolfson is talking about making everyone “safer” by eliminating lead-in-substrate in buttons. He is NOT talking about lead-in-paint. Lead-in-paint has been illegal for decades, and a small number of recalls have occurred for lead-in-paint violations relating to buttons. [No injuries were ever reported, of course, but don't get me started.] Buttons have been recalled for coming loose and violating the small parts rules. This is a REAL hazard to small children. Kids can actually choke on a button and be injured. Wolfson is NOT talking about this issue. He is focusing on other “positive effects” from the law.

Wolfson also took pains to note that the buttons were being removed from adult clothing, too. Did you realize how much danger you were in before the CPSC was able to induce these “positive effects”? I really appreciate Wolfson bringing this to my attention. Thank heavens for our federal protectors!

How many recalls have occurred in the United States for lead-in-substrate in buttons – EVER? According to the CPSC website, ZERO. According to a Google search this morning, I believe this kind of recall has NEVER occurred ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. And the removal of lead-in-substrate is a positive effect of the law? Is Wolfson responsible to explain this puzzling remark?

So after two years of continuous arguing and the devotion of many tens of thousands of man-hours of work to implement the noxious CPSIA by the federal government and industry alike , the CPSC holds up as its great achievement – buttons. Whew, it’s safe to walk the streets of America again!

Thank you CPSC for seeking the right balance between compliance and NOT putting companies out of business. Yeah, I get it.

Unfortunately, by highlighting something as asinine as buttons as a possible lead hazard, the CPSC fuels a long-simmering public hysteria over latent chemical hazards. No one was previously aware that buttons could kill you from their bound=in lead content, but apparently our federal government is quite concerned about button lead content. Isn’t that what Wolfson said? After all, why would he mention it to USA Today if it wasn’t a problem at all? This kind of remark helps persuade the public that dangers lurk where they can’t see them. Lead must be terrible, right, if the CPSC is so hysterical about it? The conclusion is inescapable.

And let’s not forget the McDonald’s Shrek glasses. Cadmium must also be a terrible problem or else why would our trusted federal government urge recall of the drinking glasses out of “an abundance of caution”? Which are we to believe – the CPSC’s actions in demanding the recall for undisclosed trace levels of cadmium in the enamel on the OUTSIDE of the glasses, or Wolfson’s own written reassurance that the glasses aren’t toxic? And of course, there is the Congressional “inquiry” by Waxman and Stupak as further evidence of the “justifiable” health concern. As the relentless stream of breathless and panicked media stories confirm, the public believes that the recall was justified and therefore that cadmium is a real concern, a silent “killer”. The fact that there has never been a single reported cadmium injury from a consumer product in this country’s history is never discussed.

This kind of reinforcement leads to paranoia about many safe products – and makes doing business in the children’s market in this country exceptionally difficult and unpleasant now. No one trusts us anymore and the only thing we did wrong was elect the wrong people to Congress.

The message that we business people can’t be trusted is clogging the airwaves almost daily. The weekly corporate bashings by Congress and the White House paints a clear picture to the American public. You need only consider the treatment of BP, Toyota, Wellpoint, Massey-Ferguson, GM, Chrysler, evil bankers . . . the list is long. We’re all bad, right? That’s the theme these days.

CPSC leadership also reinforces the notion that corporations must be closely supervised by the federal government. Corporations will cut corners and take chances with your children’s health but for the crusading efforts of this pioneering and courageous safety agency. Remember Tenenbaum’s theme: the CPSC is not a “teething tiger” anymore. With this approach at the CPSC, small wonder then that these are among the USA Today comments:

“Yeah…Tests can be costly, but on the other hand death seems to be pretty costly also. But I guess the determining factor will always be money. Save 10 cents, 10 dollars, 100 dollars at the cost of someone else.“

“Well if they cannot test the products they make to insure that our children are safe. Then its time to start making other items. The simple fact is that the Chinese and our bought and paid for congressmen/congress women have allowed this to happen. My opinion ban all products from China since it is evident that they do not care for the health of our citizens.“

“WE can never ever trust the Chinese. They are the worst people! Why do we do any business with them is beyond me.“

“This is just more gov regulation that the GOP says get’s in the way of the Free Market. Let the Free Market get the lead out on it’s own. Too bad there’s no profits in ‘getting the lead out’. It’s cheaper to use lead as a filler, and hire lobbyists to pay-off congress. We’ve got it all dialed-in in America!“

Thanks for all the help, CPSC. You sure are helping our market. Your efforts will only succeed in driving the good people out of this market, along with their good products, their innovations, their productivity gains and their jobs. And who will be around to help educate your kids and grandkids? Let’s not think about that one. No, no, ignore me for a few more years. This can go on indefinitely. We’ll just take it. We love it. Go ahead.

It’s time for Nero to share the stage with the Democrats. Go on, fiddle while Rome burns.

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CPSIA – CPSC Sets Its Sights On the Real Menace to Society . . . Buttons

CPSIA – Recall of Safe Products Continues to Reverberate

The national convulsions (call it “brain softening”) induced by the CPSC’s action in forcing McDonald’s to recall admittedly SAFE Shrek drinking glasses continued to spin out of control today. Following their usual election year script of harshly dealing with invented crises to impress the easily-duped public, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak, two Democratic leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent letters today to McDonald’s and the manufacturer of the glasses, ARC International, demanding information to blow this non-issue up into a mega-crisis.

Before I summarize how Waxman and Stupak worked to spread regulatory disease far and wide, I think we all owe a big THANK YOU to the CPSC for so vigilantly protecting us from these safe products. There is no doubt that we were all victims of a false sense of security, not knowing that atoms of cadmium might be lurking on the outside of drinking glasses. Of course, cadmium atoms also lurk in our food, in our water, in our air, in our dirt AND on countless glasses in our homes sold over preceding decades without incident – but, heck, that’s a little too science-y, don’t you think? Only by exposing that these glasses are SAFE while at the VERY SAME TIME pushing for a highly-publicized recall and resulting media panic, did the CPSC reveal that we were actually safe without even knowing it – and yet they STILL acted to protect us! What a great bunch of guys and gals we have at the CPSC, we are so lucky. No really, thank YOU Consumer Product Safety Commission!

Mssrs. Waxman and Stupak sent off two letters demanding lots of “incriminating” information, such as:

• A list of all manufacturers and distributors that supply McDonald’s with children’s products. McDonald’s interest in keeping its suppliers’ identities confidential as a trade secret is no never mind. After all, the glasses they recalled are SAFE, so you can’t take ANY chances. And let’s not forget the FACT that the other McDonald’s items are NOT suspected of ANY violation of ANY law. This is Mr. Waxman’s wizardry to keep us all so safe. . . .
• A list of all the “steps” McDonald’s takes to ensure that children’s products do not contain hazardous materials. The FACT that the CPSC has declared these glasses SAFE does not apparently matter in this inquiry, raising the question of what Waxman and Stupak mean by “hazardous materials”. Presumably then, the presence of an atom of cadmium might meet their “standard” for hazardous materials. In utopia, there is no cadmium. Waxman and Stupak represent the 1st and 8th Congressional Districts of Utopia, respectively.
• The identity of the supplier of the enamel on the SAFE glasses. This identity had previously been withheld by ARC, showing character by attempting to keep the crisis away from an innocent supplier. As ARC said in a recent newspaper report, “[it] could have been any glass company. . . . We all do the same thing using materials from the same suppliers.”

I find it ironic that the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is none other than Michael Burgess. Burgess is a doctor (M.D.). Maybe he has a sense of what constitutes an actual hazard to human health. If he does, I hope he shares it with his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. . . .

Hey, let’s not get too paranoid here. No one is going to pay attention to this mass hysteria or change how they regard the federal safety laws. This mega-screwing of two reputable companies over admittedly SAFE products is not relevant to the rest of us. Why? They’ll never be interested in us because we all make . . . SAFE PRODUCTS.

Oh, crap.

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CPSIA – Recall of Safe Products Continues to Reverberate

CPSIA – McDonald’s Shrek Glasses Weren’t an "Imminent Hazard"

Some people apparently think I contend that product recalls can only take place if the CSPC insists. I have certainly argued that the CPSC has no authority to demand or even ask for a recall unless certain specific conditions are met. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, guys, but there are limits to the agency’s legal authority. Companies themselves can recall products for any reason. There need not be a safety reason – you can recall something from the market because the color’s wrong, the material is somehow less than expected, wrong size, wrong instructions, wrong packaging, whatever. A company’s ability to recall its own products is not limited by law.

In the case of the McDonald’s Shrek glasses, yes, McDonald’s declared a voluntary recall. That’s not unusual – the vast majority of recalls are voluntary. Only a tiny handful of recalls every year are “mandatory”. In any event, the critical issue here is NOT that McDonald’s made this choice. As we have discussed, the publicity from this event forced McDonald’s hand – they had to protect their brand at all costs. The issue here is that the CPSC apparently “urged” the company to “do the right thing”. [These words come from the OnSafety blog, the official blog of the CPSC, believed to be written by Scott Wolfson, Director of Public Affairs.] It was apparently the “right thing” to do although the agency conceded that the glasses were “not toxic”, in other words SAFE.

While companies are allowed to choose to recall safe products at their pleasure, the CPSC does not have the unlimited legal authority to reach out to American companies and tell them to take this kind of voluntary action.

The power to recall emanates from certain provisions of the CPSA and FHSA. Notably, Section 12(a) of the CPSA, the agency can’t go to court unless there is an “imminent hazard”. What might that be? “As used in this section, and hereinafter in this Act, the term ‘imminently hazardous consumer product’ means a consumer product which presents imminent and unreasonable risk of death, serious illness, or severe personal injury.” Given that the glasses have been acknowledged to be “non-toxic”, this standard is impossible to meet.

The relevant term in the FHSA is “banned hazardous substance”. In Section 2(q)(1)(A), it is defined as “any toy, or other article intended for use by children, which is a hazardous substance, or which bears or contains a hazardous substance in such manner as to be susceptible of access by a child to whom such toy or other article is entrusted”. [If a ban is done pursuant to subsection (B) of this clause as a "household item" because it is chemical in nature, it must be done by rule, subject to comment and so on. There was no rulemaking process involved in this case.]

“Hazardous material” is defined in Section 2(f)(1)(D) in relevant part as “Any toy or other article intended for use by children which the Commission by regulation determines, in accordance with section 3(e) of this Act, presents an electrical, mechanical, or thermal hazard.” And Section 3(e) refers only to electrical, mechanical or thermal hazards, clearly inapplicable here.

Bottom line, the McDonald’s glasses are outside the reach of the CPSC . . . if the wording of its principal empowering laws matter anymore.

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CPSIA – McDonald’s Shrek Glasses Weren’t an "Imminent Hazard"

CPSIA – McDonalds Recall Urged by CPSC – WHY?

The CPSC has put in writing that the Shrek glasses recalled by McDonald’s last week are “non-toxic”. Nonetheless, the CPSC (perhaps the commission itself, as noted in certain press reports) “urged” the company to make the recall.

So now it appears that the CPSC thinks it’s okay to ask a company to recall a product for reasons that it acknowledges pose no safety issue. Why?

Let’s not forget all the expense that this move imposes on the company coerced into making the recall. The law restrict the power of the agency to take this step, in part to preserve the incentive to make “at risk” investments in new products. There’s also that small detail called “due process”. My previous post noted that the CPSC does not have the authority to make recalls of products absent a “substantial product hazard”. This suggests that the CPSC was exceeding its authority in the McDonald’s case. By almost any measure, the CPSC’s actions were inexplicable. Why demand a recall of a safe product?

I cannot answer this question for the CPSC or its Chairman, Inez Tenenbaum. However, here’s a few salient facts to chew on:

1. The Member of Congress (Jackie Speier) that “tipped off” the CPSC about this matter is a Democrat.
2. Jackie Speier represents a California Congressional district (12th) that abuts Nancy Pelosi’s district (8th).
3. Shortly after first being elected to Congress in a 2008 by-election, Speier was appointed by Pelosi to serve as a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, then chaired by none other than Henry Waxman. Waxman resigned this chairmanship to take over as Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
4. Ms. Speier has publicly endorsed the “black box” requirement for cars that Mr. Waxman supports. She also wants to create a federal law restricting cadmium in jewelry. Her concept of Congressional activism is very closely aligned with Mr. Waxman, another California Democrat and patron of the Democratic majority on the Commission.
5. Today, Speier is a member of three committees. Besides Oversight, the other two committees are chaired by Edward Markey and Barney Frank, two close allies of Waxman and Pelosi.
6. Jackie Speier is running for reelection in one of the most phobic of states, California. The Democrats need every seat they can get in this Mid-Term election.
7. One of the three Democrat Commissioners appointed by Obama was a member of Henry Waxman’s staff for several years (Adler).

And can anyone imagine a Democrat-controlled CPSC telling a Democratic Member of Congress from the San Francisco area that her highly-publicized call for investigation of Shrek glasses because of cadmium was, in fact, unmerited, that the product was perfectly safe and the large corporation responsible for the glasses had protected consumers very well? In an election year with Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House and Henry Waxman directly overseeing the agency?

Nope, can’t think of a single reason why the leadership of the CPSC would urge McDonald’s to recall the safe glasses.

At least the CPSC won’t have to pay the costs of the recall. That’s McDonald’s problem.

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CPSIA – McDonalds Recall Urged by CPSC – WHY?

CPSIA – What is a "Substantial Product Hazard"?

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CPSIA – What is a "Substantial Product Hazard"?

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 – Publishers HOWL Over Inadequate Waxman Amendment

As rumors swirl over the demise of the Waxman Amendment (CPSEA) over Mr. Waxman’s stubborn refusal to fix the CPSIA, the Publishing industry is bemoaning their fate under the awful CPSIA. Stand in line, baby!

In an article in Publishers Weekly online, the publishers noted that last week’s hearing did not “address the needs of the book publishing industry, which argues that it should be exempted since virtually no ‘ordinary’ children’s books contain lead above the limits outlined in the CPSIA.” Hmmm. Apparently, the publishers don’t have much of a sense of humor about the burden of being swept up in new safety rules that will accomplish nothing:

“’We don’t see the sense of hundreds of thousands of books clogging the queues at the independent third-party testing facilities, only to be found safe, at a great burden of cost to publishers,’ said Allan Adler, v-p for legal and government affairs at the Association of American Publishers. . . . Adler noted that the current stay of enforcement expires in February 2011 and the publishing industry needs a solution before then. ‘We have our eye on the calendar.’ No matter what happens with “ordinary” children’s books, novelty and book-plus titles (such as those with plastic incorporated or toys attached) will still be subject to the CPSIA’s testing and other requirements.” [Emphasis added]

Eyes on the calendar . . . wow, the publishers really seemed pissed off. I wonder why.

Well, since you asked, here is the data for all book recalls in the last 11 years:

• Choking recalls: 8 recalls, 1 injury, no deaths
• Lead recalls: 2 recalls, no injuries, no deaths
• Lead-in-paint: 3 recalls, no injuries, no deaths
• Strangulation: 1 recall, no injuries, no deaths

Obviously a very dangerous category of products – books produced one injury in 11 years. The “injury” was that a child “began to choke”. Oh the horror of it all.

Think of the quality of our government – the book guys have been begging, literally BEGGING, for relief for almost two years now and the Dem-led Congress has utterly refused to act. The most the CPSC could do for them was to announce that books printed after 1985 were lead-free. Everybody, toss out your copy of “1984″. The government says so!

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the five recalls associated with lead. I am sure these injury-free lead recalls over the last 11 years will clarify how at risk we are:

1. Parragon, Inc.: This recall for lead featured lead solder on a jewelry charm. Oooo, that’s scary.
2. St. Martin’s Press LLC: This recall of cloth books featured a “red plastic dot” that contained high levels of lead. I assume this “dot” was made of vinyl and was not in fact coated. One might ask how this might cause lead poisoning. This recall was a head scratcher for many people after it occurred.
3. Martin Designs, Inc.: This recall involved lead paint on the spiral binding of a book.
4. eeBoo Corp.: This recall involved lead paint on the spiral binding of a book.
5. Galison/Mudpuppy: This recall involved lead paint on the spiral binding of a book.

Please note that the lead-in-paint violations were ALSO violations of prior law. Lead-in-paint has been illegal for decades on children’s products.

Can anyone identify the dreaded danger posed by books? As I said long ago in this space, I always thought it was the words that were dangerous in a book. Certainly that’s what seems to be dangerous in a blog . . . .

And perhaps someone from the CPSC (I know you are reading this, I can see you!) could leave a comment here admitting how many man-hours have been spent (wasted) on the book issue under the CPSIA. I bet it’s nothing short of 500 man-hours, and would not be surprised if it’s more than a full man-year.

And remember, when the CPSC devotes all its resources to counting angels dancing on the head of a pin, they have very little time to find dangerous products (no, I mean ACTUALLY dangerous products). Feeling safer yet? [You shouldn't.]

Too bad, book people. You are a “necessary sacrifice” to the greater cause of making children so, so, SOOOOO safe.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Publishers HOWL Over Inadequate Waxman Amendment

CPSIA – Publishers HOWL Over Inadequate Waxman Amendment

As rumors swirl over the demise of the Waxman Amendment (CPSEA) over Mr. Waxman’s stubborn refusal to fix the CPSIA, the Publishing industry is bemoaning their fate under the awful CPSIA. Stand in line, baby!

In an article in Publishers Weekly online, the publishers noted that last week’s hearing did not “address the needs of the book publishing industry, which argues that it should be exempted since virtually no ‘ordinary’ children’s books contain lead above the limits outlined in the CPSIA.” Hmmm. Apparently, the publishers don’t have much of a sense of humor about the burden of being swept up in new safety rules that will accomplish nothing:

“’We don’t see the sense of hundreds of thousands of books clogging the queues at the independent third-party testing facilities, only to be found safe, at a great burden of cost to publishers,’ said Allan Adler, v-p for legal and government affairs at the Association of American Publishers. . . . Adler noted that the current stay of enforcement expires in February 2011 and the publishing industry needs a solution before then. ‘We have our eye on the calendar.’ No matter what happens with “ordinary” children’s books, novelty and book-plus titles (such as those with plastic incorporated or toys attached) will still be subject to the CPSIA’s testing and other requirements.” [Emphasis added]

Eyes on the calendar . . . wow, the publishers really seemed pissed off. I wonder why.

Well, since you asked, here is the data for all book recalls in the last 11 years:

• Choking recalls: 8 recalls, 1 injury, no deaths
• Lead recalls: 2 recalls, no injuries, no deaths
• Lead-in-paint: 3 recalls, no injuries, no deaths
• Strangulation: 1 recall, no injuries, no deaths

Obviously a very dangerous category of products – books produced one injury in 11 years. The “injury” was that a child “began to choke”. Oh the horror of it all.

Think of the quality of our government – the book guys have been begging, literally BEGGING, for relief for almost two years now and the Dem-led Congress has utterly refused to act. The most the CPSC could do for them was to announce that books printed after 1985 were lead-free. Everybody, toss out your copy of “1984″. The government says so!

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the five recalls associated with lead. I am sure these injury-free lead recalls over the last 11 years will clarify how at risk we are:

1. Parragon, Inc.: This recall for lead featured lead solder on a jewelry charm. Oooo, that’s scary.
2. St. Martin’s Press LLC: This recall of cloth books featured a “red plastic dot” that contained high levels of lead. I assume this “dot” was made of vinyl and was not in fact coated. One might ask how this might cause lead poisoning. This recall was a head scratcher for many people after it occurred.
3. Martin Designs, Inc.: This recall involved lead paint on the spiral binding of a book.
4. eeBoo Corp.: This recall involved lead paint on the spiral binding of a book.
5. Galison/Mudpuppy: This recall involved lead paint on the spiral binding of a book.

Please note that the lead-in-paint violations were ALSO violations of prior law. Lead-in-paint has been illegal for decades on children’s products.

Can anyone identify the dreaded danger posed by books? As I said long ago in this space, I always thought it was the words that were dangerous in a book. Certainly that’s what seems to be dangerous in a blog . . . .

And perhaps someone from the CPSC (I know you are reading this, I can see you!) could leave a comment here admitting how many man-hours have been spent (wasted) on the book issue under the CPSIA. I bet it’s nothing short of 500 man-hours, and would not be surprised if it’s more than a full man-year.

And remember, when the CPSC devotes all its resources to counting angels dancing on the head of a pin, they have very little time to find dangerous products (no, I mean ACTUALLY dangerous products). Feeling safer yet? [You shouldn't.]

Too bad, book people. You are a “necessary sacrifice” to the greater cause of making children so, so, SOOOOO safe.

Read more here:
CPSIA – Publishers HOWL Over Inadequate Waxman Amendment

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