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July 31, 2017<\/p>\n
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Contact: Cindy Hoang, National Consumers League, (202) 207-2832, cindyh@nclnet.org<\/p>\n
Washington, DC–Five national consumer groups are supporting a safety standard for all table saws. In joint comments sent to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) last week<\/a>, the National Consumers League (NCL), the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Public Citizen, and US PIRG are supporting the CPSC\u2019s vote in favor of adopting a safety standard. The standard, known as Active Injury Mitigation (AIM), would all but eliminate the 33,400 emergency room visits and 4,000+ amputations that table saws cause annually in the United States each year. The AIM technology is a performance standard, allowing industry to use any technology that prevents serious injuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is precisely why the Consumer Product Safety Commission was established in 1972: to mitigate injuries in the market place when there is a pattern of injury and an affordable, viable technology to address those injuries,\u201d said Sally Greenberg, NCL executive director. \u201cTable saw blades are associated with over 30,000 emergency department-treated injuries annually and an average of 11 amputations a day, resulting in excruciating pain, expensive medical costs, and lifelong disabilities to victims. The CPSC began formally investigating table saw safety since 2006. In the interim, numerous detailed studies conducted by CPSC staff and others have confirmed that the adoption of a performance requirement makes sense both for consumer safety and for the economic benefits it would bring to society at large.\u201d<\/p>\n NCL also filed its own comments available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n