Lots of Work Still To Be Done

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was passed in the Fall of 2008. It’s hard to believe it has been that long ago. A decade later, the blockbuster regulation that affects so much of what we sell in the promotional products industry has made our lives a little safer. It has especially improved safety in the manufacturing of children’s products, but I think it’s safe to say we’d probably all agree there’s still much more to be done.

The CPSIA, which passed in the House of Representatives without a dissenting vote, significantly increased the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. For suppliers in our industry, the CPSIA created new testing and documentation requirements, and set acceptable levels of several chemicals, including lead. The CPSIA really built on the Lead-Free Toys Act from a couple years earlier, which was prompted by a report that items sold in the Capitol Building gift shops contained high levels of lead. Once the representatives cleaned up their own backyard, they then moved on to the CPSIA, which created new requirements on the manufacturing of clothing, shoes, personal care products, jewelry, home furnishings, bedding, toys, electronics and video games, books, school supplies, and educational materials.

The initial direction of the CPSIA was to provide protection for children by regulating products designed for an intended usage group twelve years old or younger. Before the law was enacted, there was really no specific requirement that children’s products be tested for safety. As a result, untested and dangerous children’s products could easily enter the retail market prior to 2008. Since no database existed, parents basically learned about product concerns or flat out failures only after children were injured, or worse.

The CPSIA also led to the creation of a powerful product safety tool, the Consumer Product Safety Incident Database. We’ve talked about accessing this info before for your clients at SaferProducts.gov. If you’ve not yet done that, be sure to check it out. It’s a site you can use to both submit and search what the CPSC calls “reports of harm” about products. Used properly, the CPSC hopes this tool will help you spot potential safety problems even before reported incidents may have triggered a recall.

How about checking more broadly to see if a product category you’re sourcing has actually been involved in a recall? Maybe your client would prefer to know that ANY product in a category has been recalled—not just the specific one you’ve discussed. For a quick “one-stop shop,” you can check Recalls.gov for recalls prompted not only by the CPSC, but from five other unrelated agencies, including the FDA, EPA, and even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In spite of the advancements made to date, there’s still much work yet to be done. I believe more stringent product standards should be developed, and also that SaferProducts.gov should be made even more useful to a much wider audience. But, I’m not going to knock the progress we’ve made over the last decade. We have a pretty good start, and all of us in the promotional products industry have information on and access to the regulations and tools necessary to help provide clients increasingly safer products. It’s all good, but I’m going to continue to advocate for more. When the end result is safe customers and safe end-users, it’s a conversation well worth continuing to have.