Tag: CPSC

For parents, especially first-time moms and dads, learning the do’s and don’ts of raising a child is like drinking from a firehose. But parents aren’t the only ones facing information overload when it comes to all the products on the market and the growing body of research related to infant and child safety. Regulators feel it too.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been in the hot seat lately, criticized for its handling of recent children’s and infant product recalls. The latest chapter in the “failure to act” saga features in-home elevators that are putting children at risk. While it appears the agency is trying to regain control of the story by issuing a safety warning in recent days, it may be too little too late.

Consumer advocates are making serious headway in their efforts to repeal a section of the Consumer Product Safety Act designed to protect the proprietary information of manufacturers. Section 6(b) of the 2011 consumer protection law attempts to answer a difficult question: Who gets the first right to announce a product issue, the retailer or the manufacturer? As written and enforced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the answer is the manufacturer.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been in the hot seat lately, criticized for its handling of recent children’s and infant product recalls. The latest chapter in the “failure to act” saga features in-home elevators that are putting children at risk. While it appears the agency is trying to regain control of the story by issuing a safety warning in recent days, it may be too little too late.

The biggest news coming out of the Consumer Product Safety Commission lately is Acting Chairwoman Ann Marie Buerkle’s decision to step down from her post when her term ends in October. Members of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection seized on that announcement to grill Buerkle and her fellow commissioners about alleged lax CPSC regulation during a recent oversight hearing.