By Lyndsey Layton - Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 10, 2011
The federal government is poised for the first time to make public thousands of complaints it receives each year about safety problems with various products, from power tools to piggy banks.
The compilation of consumer complaints, set to be launched online in March by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has been hailed by consumer advocates as a resource that will revolutionize the way people make buying decisions.
But major manufacturing and industry groups have raised concerns about the public database, saying it may be filled with fictitious slams against their brands. Competitors or others with political motives could post inaccurate claims, business leaders say, and the agency will not be able to investigate most of the complaints.
Arguing that this could present a new burden in an already difficult economic environment, they are working behind the scenes to delay or revamp the project.
"We're not opposed to a database," said Rosario Palmieri, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "We're opposed to a database that's full of inaccurate information."
Agency officials say they have built in safeguards to prevent such abuse and have carefully balanced the interests of consumers and manufacturers. On Tuesday, they will offer the public an online preview of how the database will work.
The new system was created as part of a landmark consumer product safety law passed by Congress in 2008. It has taken shape amid bitter partisan divisions at the CPSC, with Democratic appointees backing it and Republican appointees deriding it as a waste of taxpayer money that could damage businesses.
The CPSC already collects reports of defective products from a wide range of sources, including consumers, health-care providers, death certificates and media accounts.
But most of that information is shielded from public view. Until now, the only way for consumers to access safety complaints is to file a public-records request with the CPSC. The agency is then required by law to consult with the manufacturer before releasing information about their products, and the company can protest or sue to stop disclosure.
If the agency thinks a dangerous product should be pulled from the market, it must negotiate a recall with the manufacturer, a process that can take months or years.
Meanwhile, unwitting shoppers can continue to buy the item.
Under the new system, a complaint filed by a consumer will be posted for anyone to read within 15 days.
"This is a world of sunshine that we think will be tremendously beneficial to consumers," said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel at Consumers Union.
C. Gibson Vance, president of the association of trial lawyers, said in written comments submitted to the CPSC that the database will amount to an early-warning system. He pointed to the example of toxic drywall imported from China.
"Had this database been available, both the CPSC and American consumers likely would have been able to determine that there was, in fact, a systemic problem with drywall from China and stopped using it," he wrote. "Without this database in place, it took the CPSC and the general public approximately three years to conclude that there was in fact a problem."
Rachel Weintraub, a lawyer and director of product safety at the Consumer Federation of America, cited the example of drop-side cribs, which were banned after they were linked to a string of infant deaths.
"With cribs, we know that consumers reported safety incidents involving drop-side cribs to manufacturers and were told 'Oh, we don't know of any other incidents', when in fact they knew of many," she said. "This will create a new generation of more educated consumers."
But for industry groups, the new system is plagued by troubling rules, including that it allows complaints from a broad array of people, including trial lawyers and consumer groups, even if they lack direct knowledge of the defective product.
"This can create a database full of misinformation, that will be of less use to the consumer," Palmieri said. What's more, despite a disclaimer on the database that the CPSC cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the complaints, it will carry the imprimatur of the federal government, he said. "When the CPSC as a government organization publishes this information . . . it gives it weight and credibility."
Under the new system, when a consumer files a complaint, the CPSC has five days to notify the manufacturer, which in turn has 10 days to respond. A company can challenge the complaint as false, argue that it will give away a trade secret, or submit a response. The response will be published alongside the complaint in the database.
If a company says a complaint is false or would disclose confidential business information, the CPSC will decide whether to withhold or publish the complaint.
Those safeguards will protect companies, agency officials said.
Anyone filing a complaint must identify themselves, but that information will not be published and would be disclosed to the manufacturer only with the consumer's permission.
The database will not include peeves about reliability or quality, only information about defects that can cause injury or death. And it is restricted to the 15,000 types of consumer goods overseen by the CPSC, which do not include food, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, tobacco, automobiles or tires.
Only one other federal agency - the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - keeps a similar database. That database allows consumers to post complaints about cars, tires or child car seats but does not permit manufacturers an opportunity to post a rebuttal.
CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum says the database will be rolled out on time despite pushback from the business community. "The consumer database is on budget and on schedule to be launched in March," she said last week.
The agency, which received about 16,000 consumer complaints in 2009, does not know how many to expect in the new system, according to spokesman Scott Wolfson.
Tenenbaum and the other two Democrats on the CPSC trumpeted the final version of the database as a powerful tool for consumers, while the two Republicans, Anne Northup and Nancy Nord, were opposed.
After the vote, Northrup released a statement that said the CPSC opted to create a database that "wastes taxpayer money, confuses and misleads consumers, raises prices, kills jobs, and damages the reputations of safe and responsible manufacturers."
Nord said the move was "another example of poorly conceived and excessive regulation that, sadly, has become the norm at CPSC."
The database, which is scheduled to be launched March 11, will be available at www.saferproducts.gov.
Showing posts with label Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Show all posts
Monday, January 10, 2011
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Chemical Industry to Nation's Infants & Toddlers: Suck It (Up)
Thursday, November 18, 2010 by NRDC Blog
by Daniel Rosenberg
by Daniel Rosenberg
In the major food safety legislation that the Senate is debating, which will likely pass today or tomorrow, one important provision will probably be missing: a ban on bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles or sippy cups. The provision wasn’t included in the bill, and an amendment to add it before passage wasn’t able to get a vote on the floor of the Senate, due in large part to objections from the chemical industry – represented in Washington DC by its trade association The American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association).
Give the chemical industry some credit: it has been acting consistently for years, even decades, to oppose any meaningful regulation of chemicals at the federal or state level, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and blocking protection for the public from chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects and learning and developmental disabilities. And yet, blocking passage, or even a vote, on an amendment to ban bisphenol A in baby bottles and sippy cups still seems like a new low.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has emerged as a strong national leader in the fight for strong public protections from toxic chemicals, especially chemicals to which people are most widely exposed. She was instrumental in banning three phthalates commonly used as plasticizers in childrens’ toys, and suspending the use of three others pending additional study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That was a fight the chemical industry lost, largely because no Senator was willing to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and publicly oppose her efforts. The chemical industry learned its lesson from that fight, and, in the battle over bisphenol A, the industry was determined to prevent her provision from making it into legislation, or ever allowing it to come up for a vote. According to at least one report, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr has been working with the chemical industry behind the scenes to block the Feinstein provision from being included in the bill.
The food industry, represented by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has also gone to great lengths to prevent Senator Feinstein from successfully restricting the use of BPA, or fully assessing its potential effects on women and children. But that is a story for another post. At the end of the day, the Grocery Manufacturers were willing to go along with legislation that at least banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups (where GMA members have less of a direct interest), and that required FDA to complete a safety assessment and determine whether BPA met the safety requirements of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act by December 2012.
But the chemical industry couldn’t even stomach that. The ACC – whose members include some of the largest chemical companies in the world such as BASF, Dow, and DuPont and other plastics manufacturers -- has spent millions of dollars to defeat state-led efforts to restrict the use of bisphenol A in infant formula, baby food, baby bottles and sippy cups. They’ve had a poor return on that investment, though. To date, seven states have adopted some version of restrictions on the use of BPA, along with the City of Chicago.
A little more than a year ago, the ACC, the GMA, and several industry lobbyists and representatives of companies including Coca-Cola and Del Monte met at a private club in Washington DC to plot a strategy for defeating more of those state led-efforts. Minutes from that meeting ended up in the hands of the Washington Post and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which both ran stories about industry’s plans. These included searching for a pregnant mom to be a spokesperson for BPA, buying the support of scientists, and convincing African-Americans and Hispanics that a ban on BPA in infant formula and baby food would make those products unavailable where they lived.
The industry had one temporary victory in California this year, where it spent millions of dollars to defeat legislation to ban BPA in children’s food products. The industry (which has continually complained about the “high cost” of complying with the most basic proposals from EPA or Congress to expand the public’s right to know about what products contain toxic chemicals, and which chemicals people should be concerned about) can look forward to spending millions more dollars in California in the near future. But don’t worry, industry profits remain healthy during these tough economic times. And they’ve shown that they’ll spend whatever it takes on lobbyists, paid scientists, misleading ad campaigns, and, of course, campaign contributions to member of Congress, to ensure that they can block as much reform as possible.
The industry will say: all of the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies by independent scientists not funded by the chemical industry that show strong associations between BPA and breast and prostate cancer, as well as effects on the reproductive system are wrong, mistaken, etc. etc. My colleague Dr. Sarah Janssen and many others have responded to those bogus charges repeatedly. But, even if we acknowledge that everything there is to be known about BPA is not yet known, that is hardly an argument for keeping BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, or any other packaging where it can migrate into our food supply. BPA is routinely found in more than 90% of us, even though it is quickly excreted from our bodies (we pee it out). That means we are essentially being exposed to BPA constantly, and the major source of that exposure is our food (including beverages). BPA crosses the placental wall, which means the developing fetus is being exposed in utero (not only to BPA, but to dozens, and possibly hundreds of other toxic chemicals).
The failure to protect the public from constant exposure to BPA is one part of a much larger problem: our current laws do not protect us from unsafe chemicals, and keep us in the dark about the potential effects of thousands of others, which may be unsafe. That is why NRDC and our coalition, the Safe Chemicals Healthy Families campaign, is working to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The chemical industry has given lip service to supporting TSCA reform and the need to protect children from unsafe chemicals (the trick being that, in the chemical industry’s view, there are no unsafe chemicals). The Feinstein amendment was an attempt to take a tentative baby step toward reform. But the Chemical Industry snuffed it out. So, big win for chemical industry lawyers on K Street. For the children of America and their parents? Not so much.
Give the chemical industry some credit: it has been acting consistently for years, even decades, to oppose any meaningful regulation of chemicals at the federal or state level, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and blocking protection for the public from chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects and learning and developmental disabilities. And yet, blocking passage, or even a vote, on an amendment to ban bisphenol A in baby bottles and sippy cups still seems like a new low.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has emerged as a strong national leader in the fight for strong public protections from toxic chemicals, especially chemicals to which people are most widely exposed. She was instrumental in banning three phthalates commonly used as plasticizers in childrens’ toys, and suspending the use of three others pending additional study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That was a fight the chemical industry lost, largely because no Senator was willing to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and publicly oppose her efforts. The chemical industry learned its lesson from that fight, and, in the battle over bisphenol A, the industry was determined to prevent her provision from making it into legislation, or ever allowing it to come up for a vote. According to at least one report, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr has been working with the chemical industry behind the scenes to block the Feinstein provision from being included in the bill.
The food industry, represented by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has also gone to great lengths to prevent Senator Feinstein from successfully restricting the use of BPA, or fully assessing its potential effects on women and children. But that is a story for another post. At the end of the day, the Grocery Manufacturers were willing to go along with legislation that at least banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups (where GMA members have less of a direct interest), and that required FDA to complete a safety assessment and determine whether BPA met the safety requirements of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act by December 2012.
But the chemical industry couldn’t even stomach that. The ACC – whose members include some of the largest chemical companies in the world such as BASF, Dow, and DuPont and other plastics manufacturers -- has spent millions of dollars to defeat state-led efforts to restrict the use of bisphenol A in infant formula, baby food, baby bottles and sippy cups. They’ve had a poor return on that investment, though. To date, seven states have adopted some version of restrictions on the use of BPA, along with the City of Chicago.
A little more than a year ago, the ACC, the GMA, and several industry lobbyists and representatives of companies including Coca-Cola and Del Monte met at a private club in Washington DC to plot a strategy for defeating more of those state led-efforts. Minutes from that meeting ended up in the hands of the Washington Post and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which both ran stories about industry’s plans. These included searching for a pregnant mom to be a spokesperson for BPA, buying the support of scientists, and convincing African-Americans and Hispanics that a ban on BPA in infant formula and baby food would make those products unavailable where they lived.
The industry had one temporary victory in California this year, where it spent millions of dollars to defeat legislation to ban BPA in children’s food products. The industry (which has continually complained about the “high cost” of complying with the most basic proposals from EPA or Congress to expand the public’s right to know about what products contain toxic chemicals, and which chemicals people should be concerned about) can look forward to spending millions more dollars in California in the near future. But don’t worry, industry profits remain healthy during these tough economic times. And they’ve shown that they’ll spend whatever it takes on lobbyists, paid scientists, misleading ad campaigns, and, of course, campaign contributions to member of Congress, to ensure that they can block as much reform as possible.
The industry will say: all of the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies by independent scientists not funded by the chemical industry that show strong associations between BPA and breast and prostate cancer, as well as effects on the reproductive system are wrong, mistaken, etc. etc. My colleague Dr. Sarah Janssen and many others have responded to those bogus charges repeatedly. But, even if we acknowledge that everything there is to be known about BPA is not yet known, that is hardly an argument for keeping BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, or any other packaging where it can migrate into our food supply. BPA is routinely found in more than 90% of us, even though it is quickly excreted from our bodies (we pee it out). That means we are essentially being exposed to BPA constantly, and the major source of that exposure is our food (including beverages). BPA crosses the placental wall, which means the developing fetus is being exposed in utero (not only to BPA, but to dozens, and possibly hundreds of other toxic chemicals).
The failure to protect the public from constant exposure to BPA is one part of a much larger problem: our current laws do not protect us from unsafe chemicals, and keep us in the dark about the potential effects of thousands of others, which may be unsafe. That is why NRDC and our coalition, the Safe Chemicals Healthy Families campaign, is working to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The chemical industry has given lip service to supporting TSCA reform and the need to protect children from unsafe chemicals (the trick being that, in the chemical industry’s view, there are no unsafe chemicals). The Feinstein amendment was an attempt to take a tentative baby step toward reform. But the Chemical Industry snuffed it out. So, big win for chemical industry lawyers on K Street. For the children of America and their parents? Not so much.
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