2008 Reform Following The "Year of The Recall"
2007 has been called the "Year of the Recall" in the United States, and the CPSC alone imposed 473 recalls in 2007, a record. This notably included many incidents with lead in toys and other children's products. These issues led to the legislative interest in the reform of the agency, and the final result of these efforts was the passage of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in 2008. The bill increased funding and staffing for the CPSC, placed stricter limits on lead levels in children's products (redefined from products intended for children age seven and under to children age twelve and under), restricted certain phthalates in children's toys and child care articles, required mandatory testing and certification of applicable products, and required the CPSC to create a public database of their products.
The public database (saferproducts.gov), constructed at a cost of around $3 million USD and launched in March 2011, "publicizes complaints from virtually anyone who can provide details about a safety problem connected with any of the 15,000 kinds of consumer goods regulated by the" CPSC. While being lauded by consumer advocates for making previously hidden information available, manufacturers have expressed their concern "that most of the complaints are not first vetted by the CPSC before they are made public", meaning it could be abused and potentially used to ruin specific brands. As of mid-April 2011, the database was accruing about 30 safety complaints per day.
Read more about this topic: Consumer Product Safety Commission
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