By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Just before Thanksgiving, NCL wrote to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to ask that the Commission set a safety standard for table saws. Table saws are used by hobbyists, shop students, woodworkers, and carpenters to cut wood and other products. They are critical equipment for those who work with wood and other products, but they have inherent dangers that have been documented by the CPSC: 3,000 people each year suffer amputations (10 people suffer finger amputations each day). The average per-accident business cost is estimated to be $67,000. Each year, 30,000 people suffer injuries from table saws.

Seven years ago a company called SawStop, which has developed safety technology to stop the saw blade when it detects electrical impulses given off by a finger or other body part, filed a petition with the Commission asking that the Commission adopt safety technology throughout the industry. The CPSC has yet to act on that petition or set a safety standard for table saws.

NCL’s letter says, in part: “The technology exists – and indeed is being used today by one manufacturer – to prevent the needless and brutal accidents associated with the hazards of using table saws. These involve amputations of fingers, including potentially those of teenage students working with table saws in woodworking classes.

While this petition languishes before the Commission, with no action taken by previous CPSC officials, every day 10 ten new amputations associated with the use of table saws occur! According to CPSC’s own data, a table saw injury occurs once every nine minutes. Table saws sold in the United States are currently required to meet UL Standard 987 for Stationary and Fixed Electric Tools, but this standard does little to prevent the amputations and injuries described above.

The hazards posed by table saws are unacceptable, especially when we have the means to prevent these accidents.

In this regard, NCL strongly urges the Commission to take action toward a performance standard for table saw safety, to give the industry a specific time period in which to adopt current technology or develop new technology to prevent grave injuries and amputations from table saws. The benefits of a performance standard include allowing for innovation and creativity in the design of a table saw with these safety components built in.

Table saw safety – and the ability of CPSC to take action to protect users of table saws– seems to us to be a classic example of how the Commission’s role was envisioned by Congress when the CPSC was established in 1972. While table saws do have certain inherent hazards, that is not an excuse for failing to enact safety regulations for these products. There are many products, such as lawnmowers and ATVs, which are inherently dangerous and yet are still regulated by the Commission. And because we now have the technology to prevent those hazards and the pain, suffering, and cost that goes along with any pattern of human injury from a hazardous product, the Commission should take action.

We hope the NCL letter will provide an impetus for the Commission to act. When technology exists to prevent injury, if a pattern of injury exists and if the cost is reasonable to implement injury prevention technology, we believe the CPSC should move forward to set an industry standard for safe design.

Thanks to the American Cancer Society, smokers and friends of smokers have the third Thursday in November to work towards improving their health by quitting smoking. Quitting can be a challenge, but there are many resources available to help you through the process. Many employers and health insurance plans are now making it easier and more affordable to benefit from smoking cessation programs.

While we’re making strides in reducing the number of smokers in this country, 46.6 million adults still smoke and 40 percent of nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke. Nearly 500,000 deaths each year are linked to smoking and secondhand smoke.

You can do your part! Send an e-card to a friend or family member to encourage them to put down their cigarettes. Even if they are able to quit for just one day, their blood pressure and heart rate will drop and their carbon monoxide levels in their blood will return to normal. And if they continue to keep the cigarettes away, they’ll experience even more health benefits.

Show a loved one you care – or take a moment to care for yourself – by participating in this year’s Great American Smokeout!

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

As we come off the election last week, we’re reminded that early leaders of the National Consumers League were deeply involved in local elections. Florence Kelley and Jane Addams, from their perch at Hull House in Chicago, worked to defeat corrupt local officials and elect those who shared their concerns about child and sweatshop labor, then known as one of the leaders of the “boodlers,” as corrupt city officials were called.

I personally have always enjoyed Election Day. Ever since I was a kid and my mother would take her with me to vote, election day carries with it a sense of excitement. As Florence Kelley and Jane Addams knew, “all politics are local.” I experienced that during last week’s election; not only did I have my hopes set on the election of a number of consumer-friendly candidates locally and around the country, I myself was listed on my local ballot, running for a neighborhood advisory post that serves as the voice for the local community. I didn’t win, but nevertheless the process was unexpectedly rewarding.

I needed to be at my polling site catching the early voters and handing out literature by 7 am. I’ve never been to any polling site at that hour! But I wasn’t alone. By the time I arrived at 6:45 am, there were signs up and down the street from candidates running in the District of Columbia. And throughout the day I met my neighbors and friends, exchanged tidbits of information, learned about their concerns on traffic, pedestrian safety, or trash collection. We were visited by local officials: Mary Cheh, our Ward 3 city council member, our school board representative, and our new Mayor-elect, Vincent Gray. All stopped to chat and exchange information about turnout and who was likely to win what post.

Perhaps most moving were the elderly voters who came out. One woman moved down the street slowly but deliberately, her walker outfitted with a stylish Burberry pattern that matched her purse. Another gentleman, coming from the nearby assisted living facility, was bent all the way over his walker, but he moved at a swift pace up the hill to the church that served as our polling place. I walked him down the street after he voted, and he had a smile on his face as we talked, though he did complain that since he moved to the District, he couldn’t vote for a member of Congress! A valid criticism indeed, since District residents don’t have a vote in Congress.

I remained at the polls till they closed at 8 pm. Friends came and helped me hand out literature; another friend took me for a quick lunch break; I picked up my 15-year-old son from school and brought him to the polling place for a bit. Yes, there were a few dull moments, but all in all it was a great day and a terrific face-to-face exercise in civic involvement. Friends have asked me if I will run again for this local position. The answer is I don’t know, but the rewards of being on the ballot were a lot bigger than I ever imagined.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Sunday’s Washington Post featured a *compelling – and sad – story that reaffirms NCL’s concerns about farmworker kids. In “A Harvest of Reduced Expectations,” by reporter Kevin Sieff, the youngsters interviewed describe constantly moving from town to town during the school year – following their farmworker parents, showing up at new schools in the middle of the year, and failing to enjoy any continuity in their education. As a result, many drop out.

One teenage girl talked about living in farmworker’s quarters, which are typically run down and lacking in the niceties so many of today’s teens take for granted – a good bed, a desk on which to do homework, regular hours for meals and bedtimes. One boy is pictured sitting on his bed reading over his homework; he has no desk and lives in a threadbare makeshift living quarters.

But most troubling in the teenage girl’s story is that though she is glad to be able to be with her father and take care of her siblings, she is often surrounded by farmworkers who are NOT there with their wives and families. During the weekends many of these men bring prostitutes back to the quarters where these children live.

Reid Maki at NCL has worked tirelessly with the other members of the Child Labor Coalition, which NCL co-chairs, to gain passage of the *CARE Act, which will help to get farmworker kids out of the fields and in school full-time. This Washington Post article is particularly well headlined: A Harvest of Reduced Expectations; the piece does a great job of shining a light on the substandard and unacceptable living conditions of so many farmworkers – and their kids. Let’s pass CARE and get these kids into schools where they will be learning on a continuous basis and not exposed to a world that is hardly fit for adults, let alone children.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Since our founding in 1899, the National Consumers League has worked hard to advocate for the better health of women and children. Florence Kelley, the League’s first leader, grew up in a family in which five of her mother’s eight children died from infection or disease. Babies during that time – the period right after the Civil War – were relatively safe while breastfeeding. Once weaned, they were exposed to illness from unsanitary food, water, and milk. Today, though we pasteurize milk and have access to safe drinking water, breastfeeding remains the best option for babies and their mothers, at least for the first 6 months of a child’s life.

That is why NCL was disturbed to read about an Internal Revenue Service decision that denies nursing mothers the ability to use their tax-sheltered health care accounts to pay for breast pumps and other breastfeeding supplies. NCL has written to the IRS to ask that the agency reverse its decision.

According to IRS Publication 502, reimbursable items include those that aid in the “prevention of disease.” The IRS apparently has determined that breast-feeding does not help in the prevention of disease. NCL could not disagree more. Medical evidence that far more widespread breastfeeding would not only “prevent disease” in the United States, but would save our health care system billions of dollars is overwhelming.

Consider the following evidence about the myriad health benefits to both breastfeeding mother and child:

• According to a Harvard study published in April of this year, if 90 percent of American families would comply with medical recommendationsto breastfeed exclusively for 6 months, the United States wouldsave $13 billion per year and prevent an excess 911 deaths,nearly all of which would be among infants ($10.5 billion and 741deaths at 80 percent compliance).

• The risk of infant death due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is lowered, and respiratory infections such as pneumonia, and necrotizing enterocolitis is nearly eliminated if mothers breastfeed their infants until at least six months after birth.

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has found that breastfed infants have a lower risk of contracting ear infections, stomach viruses, atopic dermatitis, type 1 and 2 diabetes, childhood leukemia, and other health problems.

• Mothers also benefit from breastfeeding because of lower risk of contracting type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and postpartum depression (PPD).

• Breastfed infants typically need fewer sick care visits; Congress recently acknowledged the importance of breastfeeding in landmark health care reform legislation by requiring that workplaces provide women with a private place to nurse or use a breast pump.

As Dr. Robert W. Block, president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) noted in the New York Times this week, “The old adage that breast-feeding is a child’s first immunization really is true … So we need to do everything we can to remove the barriers that make it difficult.”

We agree with Dr. Block. And NCL reached out to our friends at AAP to share our letter and join forces with those who work to protect and improve the health of babies.

NCL strongly believes we need to encourage, not discourage, barriers to widespread breastfeeding. As in Florence Kelley’s day and ours, breast-fed babies get the best of all protections. Unfortunately, the IRS determination NOT to allow parents to use their tax-sheltered flex accounts to cover the cost of breast pumps has the impact of further discouraging women from breastfeeding and directly undermines what is by every measure a critical practice for improved public health. We believe the cost of breast pumps should and must be covered cost in these flex plans. We hope that NCL’s voice, along with the voices of AAP and so many others, will help to press the IRS Commissioner to reverse his decision.