by NCL Staff

To a crowd of reporters and a handful of consumer advocates, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Acting Chairman Nancy Nord yesterday described a new import surveillance system that her agency will implement, pending legislation, at many of America’s ports.

The system includes an increased staff presence to better identify potential problem products before they reach the market, Nord said at a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The new tracking system would provide the federal agency with access to real-time information of shipments and would allow the feds to focus on high-risk product shipments. CPSC would also target inspection on imported products that have been identified as riskier to consumers. NCL has voiced its concern over goods imported from China and the implications this practice presents for consumers and the workers that produce such unsafe goods. Additionally, there would be increased enforcement of standards and additional post-recall surveillance, to allow CPSC to address emerging hazards quickly and more efficiently, Nord said.

Despite the proposed changes, at the end of the day, it is the U.S. retailer who has the responsibility to ensure the products they sell are safe, Nord said. She added that unlike the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the CPSC is not designed to test products before they reach the market.

Nord acknowledged that 2007 was publicly perceived as the year of the recall, but she said that CPSC actually issued only a few more recalls last year than the year before (467 in 2006 vs. 472 in 2007). Nord said that recalls don’t indicate that more unsafe products are out in the market, and that the agency has always viewed recalls as a testament to the agency’s enforcement.

Nonetheless, “Change is inevitable, and that is where my focus will be in 2008”, Nord said.

We certainly look forward to holding you to it, CPSC!

by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

G’Day!

While traveling in Australia this week, I met with a colleague who works the product safety beat for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, (ACCC) the Australian government’s official consumer protection and enforcement agency. Gail O’Bryen, Director of Product Safety Compliance, and I have worked together on product safety issues for a number of years. Not surprisingly this year, Australia, like the United States and Europe, has had to grapple with the danger of lead in toys. Australia effectively banned lead in toys so that no toy may have more than .06 parts per million of lead.

Gail also noted that the ACCC expects to set a standard for buggies and strollers after several incidents when these nursery products lead to shocking incidents of injury or death of small children. In several instances, strollers without a braking system rolled away into water or traffic. The ACCC expects to see improved standards for strollers and buggies in the near future.

Finally, the ACCC will likely have a standard for self-extinguishing cigarettes before the end of the year. This is something the United States has adopted in some states, but there has never been a federal standard for fire-safe cigarettes, despite the work of the Consumer Product Safety Commission on the issue. The ACCC works on a vast number of consumer issues, and product safety is only a facet of what this government enforcement agency does for Aussies. Nevertheless, the product and toy safety issue has received the full attention of the Commission.

Learning what colleagues in other countries are doing to address concerns about hazardous products – many of them the same or similar products, like toys, cigarettes, or strollers – has always proved valuable to our work on these and other consumer protection issues.

Hooroo!

by Sally Greenberg

On a Tuesday morning right before the Christmas break, I sat mesmerized at a breakfast held at one of Washington’s toniest hotels as the leading guru of political prognostication, Charlie Cook, spun his tale of politics 101. Cook, a native Louisianan, has made his name in Washington as the go-to guy for playing the odds on Presidential politics, U.S. Senate, House and state races. Cook’s considered by many as the best there is for political predictions.

Among his “bon mots” from last year’s breakfast – I wasn’t there but my table mates recounted it – Cook told the audience that Rudy Guliani has “as much chance of winning the Republican nomination as I have of winning the Tour de France.” In order to appreciate that comment, you have to see the man- he’s, well, chubby, very chubby. He probably wouldn’t make it more than a kilometer or two on the straightaway, let alone into the Alps.

Cook’s reasoning? In order to win the republican nomination you have to be at least two of these three: anti-abortion (Guiliani’s pro-choice); anti-gun control (Guiliani’s pro-control, at least he was as mayor of New York City); and anti-gay rights (Guiliani backs civil unions and was considered very gay-friendly while mayor of NYC).

So who does Cook think has the best chance of winning the Republican nomination? He’s giving the odds to Mitt Romney, Massachusetts’ former governor. What about the Huckabee surge ? Cook says he has no money and no organization. And Fred Thompson –“they use the term ‘running’ for a reason. He’s not running, he’s sauntering.” As for Senator John McCain, he doesn’t have any money left either – he blew through a lot of his campaign war chest early on – and he’s made serious tactical mistakes, like backing a compromise on immigration that is inimical to the beliefs of his republican base. Cook doesn’t think McCain can do it.

On the democratic side, Cook says that if Hillary Clinton loses Iowa – the candidates are neck-and-neck there – and New Hampshire, she’s dead. If Obama wins one of these two and Clinton the other, Cooks says it’s a horserace. Cook told the audience that the democrats have a 60-40 chance of winning, but neither “Clinton nor Obama wins big.”

If dems could run a “placebo – you know, your generic boring white male ticket, say former Virginia governor Mark Warner and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh – that might guarantee them the top elected official slot.” But, as Cook noted, that’s not happening this year. So, if Cook is right, we’re looking at a Clinton-Romney race come spring, when all the dust has settled and the presidential race at full tilt. If not, well, Cook won’t be the first Washington pundit to get it wrong, but he’ll always be one of the most entertaining.

by Sally Greenberg, Executive Director

For years, safety advocates have been working to protect young children from being killed behind vehicles driving in reverse because the driver can’t adequately see the space behind the cars they are backing up. Late this afternoon, a bill to address this deadly hazard – which routinely kills two children a week, according to the group KIDS AND CARS – overcame a major hurdle, passing the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously. The Senate Commerce Committee passed a similar measure several months ago.

The biggest danger comes with the very largest of vehicles: SUVs and pickup trucks. While every car has a blind zone, the larger vehicles tend to have much wider and longer ones. Consumer Reports, where I worked for a decade and lobbied to get this bill passed before coming to the National Consumers League, measures all blind areas behind every vehicle they test. CR has measured blind zones as long as 69 feet, longer than many driveways. This means that, when a driver is sitting in the car about to put it in reverse, she can’t see anything behind her for 69 feet and as much as 7 feet wide. Clearly an accident waiting to happen. Small children run out after Mommy or Daddy, Grandpa or Grandma, without being seen and end up behind the car, in a blind spot. You know the rest. The tragedy is devastating: often the parent is the one who backs over the child, and it often happens in their own driveway.

The bill passed in the House Committee today – sponsored by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Congressman Peter King (R-NY), (the bill bears the name of his young constituent, Cameron Gulbransen, a victim of backover). Like its Senate counterpart, sponsored by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Senator John Sununu (R-NH), the bill will require that every vehicle meet a standard for rear visibility in the next few years allowing drivers to detect objects behind them, that every vehicle require that its brake be depressed if it is to shift into gear, preventing young children from playing with a gear shift and setting a car in motion (because they can’t reach the brake pedal, typically), and calling for data collection by the federal government for these types of nontraffic, noncrash incidents, which are not systematically tracked now by the government.

by NCL staff

We just found out that, in a Nov. 29 speech given at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, gave a shout-out to LifeSmarts! He was praising the Charlotte Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond for its local efforts to advance financial literacy, and he included our LifeSmarts program in a list of partnerships the Branch has engaged.

You go, LifeSmarts! Read the speech!