Archive for the 'CPSC' Category

A Draining Exercise

Published April 19, 2012 CPSC , Pools Leave a Comment

If you’ve been paying attention to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, you surely noticed that we’ve been doing a lot about pools. Pool drains and their covers, to be specific.

A quick recap: in spring 2010, we interpreted the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Safety Act to allow public pool operators to comply with the law by putting an unblockable drain cover over a single main drain. But we reversed ourselves last fall over my strenuous objection that we weren’t following our own rules or federal law, and that the safety effects of the reversal were not backed up by any staff analysis (read more about it here, here, here, and here). In one small concession to responsible pool owners who relied on our interpretation, all of my colleagues joined me in voting to ask the public for comments about the effective date of the reversal.

Well, we got comments. And the vast majority of them said that the reversal was wrong and would be expensive to implement. Based on those comments, the staff recommended that we extend the compliance date by a year for pool operators who relied on the first interpretation. The Commission agreed with the staff (by a vote of 3 to 1), so responsible pool operators get at least a little respite from our haphazard regulations. I wish we hadn’t put them in such an awkward position in the first place. I hope the message gets out to them, especially since this extension happened less than two months before the effective date. In a better world, it would pay to be a conscientious planner.

You can learn more about this by reading my official statement on the vote here.

Looking For Common Ground

Published April 3, 2012 CPSC Leave a Comment
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After a long period during which the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued rule after rule on three-to-two, party-line votes with much acrimony and little compromise, we faced a new reality this past fall when a vacancy left the Commission equally divided. At the time I wrote about this brave new era: “[A]ny action will [now] require bi-partisan support. . . . If we can build [a] bridge and restore an atmosphere of collegiality and trust, I’m confident we can find enough common ground to allow the CPSC to effectively carry out its mission.”

I’m pleased that on one significant issue voted on last week–the fiscal year 2012 operating plan– collaboration occurred and, as a result, consensus was reached. (I would note that the fiscal year began October 1, 2011 so this operating plan is six months delayed. I hope we can agree on the next one at the beginning of the fiscal year.) After much discussion among Commissioners and their staffs, the end result was a plan that we all agreed on. I hope that this new willingness of both sides to look for common ground and work together continues.

When There’s No Bang for the Buck

Published February 13, 2012 Congress , Consumer Product Safety , CPSC 2 Comments

Sometimes what seems like a good idea just doesn’t work out. When that happens, we should admit it and correct course.

As the CPSC and Congress have struggled to try to reduce the number of children drowning, one idea that has not worked is a grant program to spur states to pass particular water safety and swimming pool construction laws. For the past few years, Congress has set aside several million dollars for grants to states and localities that pass certain pool safety laws. Because the CPSC does not administer federal grants like this, we pay the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to administer this program. As we try for the third year to make this grant program work, we should look at where we stand:

  • Since the beginning of the program, not one state has applied for a grant and not one dollar has been disbursed, despite changes made to improve the program.
  • We will soon have paid CDC almost half a million dollars to administer a grant program with no takers.

Drowning is a safety problem that must be dealt with as effectively as possible. The public resources that have been allocated to an unused grant program could have been, and should be, used to actually address the issue. Trying to encourage states to pass laws by offering them a small, one-time shot of cash does not seem to be the best way to achieve our safety objective.

I suggest that Congress can—and should—find better ways to spend scarce public resources. That means either allowing the Commission greater discretion in using the funds to further pool safety or directing the funds elsewhere.

Why Cost Benefit Analysis Makes Sense

Published February 1, 2012 Congress , Consumer Product Safety , CPSC , CPSIA , Risk Analysis Leave a Comment

I’m not the only person talking about making federal regulations smarter. As I noted in my Politico piece last week, the Regulatory Accountability Act would make agencies take the costs and benefits of their regulations more seriously before they finalize them. This is something that the CPSC has not done with rules issued under the Consumer Product Safety Improvements Act, because the Act specifically gave the agency the opportunity to opt out of doing cost-benefit analysis.  Happily, one of the chief architects of the CPSIA, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark) has joined with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and others to make sure that the CPSC and other agencies do a better job of considering the impact of rules before they issue them. These two senators take to the pages of Politico to discuss the need for a better regulatory process. As they explain:

Employers…say they would like to expand and add jobs, but the regulatory environment has become too uncertain and costly.  Over-regulation now tops the list of ‘most important problems’ faced by small businesses…now is the time to build a more job-friendly regulatory system. This bipartisan blueprint would do just that.

It is unfortunate that the CPSC did not think about minimizing regulatory cost as we busily churned out regulations over the past several years.  Maybe that will now change. 

Read their piece here.

End Government by Guesswork

Published January 25, 2012 Congress , Consumer Product Safety , CPSC , CPSIA , Risk Analysis , Small Business , Testing , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Regulators need good data to make good policy. As President Obama made clear yesterday in his speech to Congress, it’s important to reform regulations that are “unnecessary[] or too costly.” He demanded that federal agencies “eliminate rules that don’t make sense.”

But over the last two and a half years, the Commission hasn’t taken the time to make sensible rules. Instead, we crystal-balled benefits and ignored costs that we refuse to measure. And since our rules came into effect, costs for consumers have gone up needlessly as companies pass their costs on or leave markets entirely. These results are unnecessary and do not benefit consumers. We could have minimized them by performing cost-benefit analyses. Today, Politico posted my op-ed explaining in more detail why cost-benefit analysis makes for smart regulation and why the CPSC needs to get back to competent, sensible regulating. You can read it here.

Start Your New Year Off Right

Published January 6, 2012 Certification , Children's Products , Comment Request , Consumer Product Safety , CPSC , CPSIA , Small Business , Testing Leave a Comment

As you turn your calendars, there are a few things you should be keeping in mind. The Commission’s stay on the enforcement of the Third-Party Testing and Certification Rule is gone as of January 1st. So you should make doubly sure that your manufacturing program is in compliance if you make a children’s product that is subject to a testing rule.

And, if you’re a small-batch manufacturer, you should hurry up and sign up on the Commission’s Small Batch Manufacturers’ Registry here to give yourself peace of mind that you are exempt from certain testing requirements until the Commission takes further action.

Finally, and most importantly, in all of the regulations that the Commission has put out over the past two years, we have not given any serious consideration to the cost imposed on the economy. Congress, after hearing some loud complaints, decided to fix that with H.R. 2715, the law passed last summer that requires the Commission to consider ways to reduce the burden of third-party testing, among other things. The Commission published a series of questions on the issue in October, and we asked you for your ideas on the ways the Commission can reduce costs. We need your ideas by January 23rd. So submit your comments here!

I will be pushing internally to make sure that the staff and the Commission give serious, thoughtful consideration to the ways we can reduce costs, and your ideas in particular. But we can only be successful in reducing costs if we get serious—and perhaps out-of-the-box—ideas from you on how we can best achieve those reductions. So, please, help us ensure product safety in the most rational, cost-effective manner possible; send us your comments!

A Voice of Reason

Published January 5, 2012 Consumer Product Safety , CPSC , Risk Analysis 1 Comment

If you head over to reason.com, you’ll find a column by A. Barton Hinkle that deftly clarifies what the debate is really about when CPSC (or any other agency) is thinking about regulating something. The argument isn’t about whether or not regulations should exist at all or whether our modern lives need any rules. Clearly, they do.

The debate is about where to draw the line. Hinkle writes, “if a . . . rule can prevent 1 million birth defects at a cost of only one dollar, then the regulation merits adoption—and if a regulation would prevent only one birth defect at a cost of $100 trillion, then it does not. In the real world regulations fall within narrower parameters.”

That is where our focus has to be at every Commission meeting. We need to take a regulatory Hippocratic Oath: “Do more good than harm.” Sometimes, that goal will rest on the broad question, to regulate or not to regulate. Most often, however, it will depend on how we choose to regulate and how carefully we draw the lines.

As an example, look at our debate back in July on whether to lower the lead standard for children’s products down to 100 parts-per-million—that is 99.99% lead free. Common sense and the language of the law that required that debate suggested we should look at different kinds of products differently and add a degree of practicality to our decision. Lead in a doorknob and lead in a pacifier are two very different things.

Instead of recognizing that and actually digging into the real problem, we treated the entire universe of children’s products with one heavy hand. We reached for our largest regulatory hammer instead of a scalpel, and we shifted even more costs to businesses when we glibly told them that, if they wanted an exemption, they should come beg us to do the compartmentalized analysis we should have done up front. The result will be more money—and maybe more jobs and companies, too—lost to nothing but process. We could have avoided that result by using our expertise and resources to do the legwork on our own.

I hope we’ll do the hard work in the future, rather than hiding clumsy solutions behind emotional strawmen and cute catchphrases. I hope we’ll listen to the voice of reason.

Tumbling into a Registry

Published December 30, 2011 Children's Products , CPSC , Small Business , Testing 2 Comments

Remember when you were a kid and you really wanted nothing more than to go out and play, but your parents said you couldn’t until you cleaned your room? Did you try to get by with just shoving everything in the closet? That worked right up until the door was opened and everything tumbled out, revealing the sloppiness of your effort. Now replace the child with a federal agency, and replace parental orders with congressional mandates. That’s what’s happening at the CPSC.

Like a child who “cleans” his room by stuffing everything into the closet, the CPSC rushed through a congressionally-mandated small-batch–manufacturers registry sloppily and at the last minute. As a result the agency may be failing to protect the very people the registry was supposed to protect. Last week, we finally issued a press release to let small batch manufacturers (SBMs) of children’s products know how they can take advantage of the testing relief Congress provided SBMs last August. Left unclear was whether an SBM had to be on the registry not to be required to perform certain tests that are mandated to begin in January 2012.

There is no new rule, and there was no Commission action. We shoved everything into a press release and called it a day. And to make matters worse, we issued our press release on December 23, during the holidays and just days before the new testing requirement kicks in. Our insincerity is obvious.

Another policy question not discussed by the Commission was this: Should the registry be public? There are reasonable arguments that it should be. However, there are also reasons why it should not be public since, by publishing the registry, we are implicitly releasing confidential information. (To register, a company has to be below certain revenue and product-quantity thresholds. Commissioner Northup has detailed the problems with publicizing this information, and I won’t belabor them here.) My key concern is there was no Commission-level discussion of this important policy issue.

Instead of working to find a compromise or a solution that would accommodate both points of view—something that could have been accomplished—the concerns of half of the Commission were ignored. The Chairman decided to call the process of establishing the SBM Registry and the attendant issues surrounding it “operational” rather than policy in order to act unilaterally through staff, instead of through a Commission vote.

They have told companies to use the complicated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption process if they want to keep the CPSC from telling their financial particulars to the whole world. That process requires time and legal expertise, and I believe our retreat to FOIA is contrary to the spirit of the law.

Congress wanted to relieve the product-testing burden for companies least able to bear it and to protect America’s vital small business job-creation engine. Do we really think Congress meant for these businesses to save money on testing just to spend it on lawyers? All these points could and should have been part of a Commission discussion, so people understand the reasoning behind these important decisions.

Will there occasionally be some substantial, fundamental disagreements about the best course of action? Of course there will be, but we owe to each other and the public to work to make those as infrequent as possible and to resolve them as best we can when they occur. I know we can do better, and I hope we will, but I’ll need some help from my Democratic colleagues to build a bridge.

Postcard from the Subcontinent

Published December 5, 2011 CPSC , CPSIA , Jobs , Travel Leave a Comment

Greetings from Bangalore, one of India’s principal textile and apparel manufacturing centers. This week I have been in both India and Bangladesh, advocating product safety to the region’s garment manufacturers. Here are some quick impressions:

• The textile and apparel industry is very important to the economies of India and Bangladesh. Most of the apparel Americans wear is imported and more and more of of that clothing comes from these two countries. In fact, Bangladesh is America’s fourth largest supplier of apparel, and India follows right after.

• My message of pushing safety up the supply chain has been well received in both countries. The Bangladesh conference where I spoke had more than 350 attendees, with many turned away because it was oversubscribed. The demand for the information we were giving was so great that the industry is already talking about another safety conference within the year. The turnout here in Bangalore was very large as well.

• Garment manufacturers, suppliers, and lab experts repeatedly expressed their appreciation that a senior government official would come this distance to discuss and explain the new and complex U.S. consumer laws. The level of official U.S. government engagement in this dialogue drove home the importance of product safety to this audience. Clearly, both the message and the messenger are important.

I was impressed by the eagerness of attendees to learn the rules and get it right. This translates into greater safety for American consumers.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Published November 23, 2011 Children's Products , Consumer Product Safety , CPSC , Retailers Leave a Comment

As you get started on your holiday shopping this weekend–Black Friday and Cyber Monday are upon us–you’ll want to keep your eyes open for a lot of things: a great deal, that can’t-miss gift, a parking spot that isn’t in the next county. There are, however, some other things you’ll need to keep an eye out.

  •  Look out for drawstrings on children’s clothes. They can easily get caught in playground equipment, furniture, or other objects and pose an entrapment or strangulation hazard. Earlier this year, at my urging, CPSC found that neck drawstrings in children’s clothes sized 2T to 12 are substantial product hazards. They shouldn’t be on the shelves anymore. If they are, they certainly shouldn’t be on your children.
  •  When you’re choosing toys and clothes, make sure they’re age appropriate for the child. Working with CPSC and industry groups, manufacturers have gone to great lengths to decide the right age range for their products, and those should be noted right on the packaging. Look for the label and take it seriously.
  •  A big part of those ratings is choking hazards. Always remember one simple rule: If kids can put something in their mouths, they will. Make sure toys for younger children do not have small parts that can easily pop off or break off. Small magnets and tiny button batteries pose special hazards. If swallowed, magnets can stick together inside the body and injuries like punctured intestines or blood poisoning can result.  Button batteries, if swallowed, can also result in severe internal injuries. 
  •  If a new TV is on your list, look for a good, safe place to put it. Children have been injured and killed from TVs tipping over and falling on them. A professionally-installed wall mount might be the best plan, but, if your new set will be standing on furniture, make sure to pick up some anchor straps. They’re an inexpensive way to prevent an unimaginable tragedy.
  •  If you’re picking up a tree to put those goodies under, keep a few things in mind. For natural trees, green is good. Not only will a fresher, greener tree look and smell nicer for longer, it will also be less of a fire risk. For artificial trees, look for “Fire Resistant” on the label. For either kind of tree, keep it away from heat sources.
  •  When you’re putting the lights up, check them for bare wires, loose connections, or cracked or broken sockets. If it’s time to replace them, look at the labels. Make sure they’re lab tested and make sure they’re certified for the use you’re planning: Outdoor displays need outdoor lights.
  •  Finally, if a power outage turns a bright holiday into a dark one, use care when you pick your solution. Keep candles away from flammable surfaces, and do not use a generator indoors. The carbon monoxide fumes can build up and suffocate quickly.

As much as CPSC, manufacturers, and retailers have worked , and continue to work, to make every product on the shelves as safe as it can be, there will always be some risks, and people will make some mistakes. We have put out a lot of new rules this year, and, while I haven’t agreed with all of them, I will always support the goal of making products safer. But safety is a joint effort shared by regulators and consumers. In many ways, you can do more to keep your family safe than my colleagues and I ever could, just by staying informed and making sound, responsible decisions.

The holiday season should be a time for family and fun, not emergency room visits or worse. A little information and a good dose of caution can help ensure your holiday is a safe and happy one.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and a safe and joyful holiday season!

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