Sally Greenberg presented product safety keynote address at ICPHSO annual conference
Sally Greenberg, the National Consumers League (NCL) CEO, presented the following product safety principles on February 19, 2025, as a keynote speaker at the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO) 2025 Annual Meeting and Training Symposium
Product Safety First Principles:
1. Don’t blame consumers if there’s a pattern of injury and a lot of people, especially children, are getting injured using a product. The problem is likely with the product, not the people.
2. It’s not misuse when people act in utterly human ways or surprise, surprise, fail to follow complex, unreasonable instructions.
3. If there’s technology to redesign a product to prevent injury and that technology can be adopted for a reasonable cost, it should be done, either by the manufacturer or, if they won’t act, through a required safety standard.
4. Every industry member must be required to meet the same standards, so none undercuts price and shortchanges safety to get a competitive advantage.
5. Safety should not be just for those who can afford to pay for it. Safety should be available and standard for all consumers.
6. Consumers may claim to dislike government, but they universally believe that government agencies have reviewed every product on the store shelves and believe everything they buy has been vetted for safety.
7. Manufacturers and regulators, you cannot sticker over safety problems or put a warning label on an inherently unsafe product. Consumers have no problem with warning labels, but they are not a substitute for addressing inherent safety issues.
8. Education campaigns are not terribly effective if there’s an inherent safety problem with a product. Seat belts are a case in point. NHTSA ran a multi-year, multimillion-dollar campaign to convince consumers to use seatbelts. After spending millions of dollars and years on the campaign, the rate of seatbelt use rose from about 11 percent to 14 percent. There was no meaningful change until states passed laws requiring the wearing of seat belts. Current use is 91% — saving tens of thousands of lives.
9. Anyone who thinks that the market will sort out dangerous products is living in a dream world. That is why we need the CPSC and other consumer safety organizations.
10 . Capitalism works, but not without regulation. The most successful market economies also have extensive regulatory systems in place. We need rules of the road to encourage competition while reining in the tendency to put profits over public safety and injury prevention.
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About the National Consumers League (NCL)
The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.
