Kids in Danger - Context On Children's Product Safety

Context On Children's Product Safety

KID produces monthly newsletters that cover recent developments and recalls in children's products. In depth research on product safety topics is another ongoing project of the group. Funded by an ethics grant from the Kemper Foundation, a case study entitled The Playskool Travel-Lite Crib was published.A book entitled It's No Accident, was written on this topic.

State legislators have passed and are in various stages of passing laws known generally as "The Children's Product Safety Act." One feature of these laws is the prohibition on the sale or lease of any children's product that has been recalled. Illinois, for example, passed this legislation in 1999. Arkansas, in addition to passing its Child Product Safety Act, maintains a special website located at http://www.childproductsafety.com/ that provides details on the legislation, recalls by year, recalls by category, and recalls by company.

In late July, 2008, federal legislators reached agreement on improving children's product safety. The course of KID's role in the legislation and the portion of the law named in honor of Danny Keysar was described in the Chicago Tribune as follows:

Ginzel has spent the last decade pushing for tougher testing of children's products before they're sold and more effective ways of sweeping dangerous products off store shelves...."We'd rather have our son," Ginzel said, choking up. "But whatever we can do to protect other families-it's not really a choice we can make. It's something we have to do".... That part of the law (named after Danny Keysar) forces the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to enact tougher safety rules for durable nursery products, including cribs, and requires that manufacturers test their products to those standards before they're sold.