5 takeaways from NBC News’ investigation into deadly consumer products
Popular products that pose a threat to children can remain on the market for years. This is how hurdles at the Consumer Product Safety Commission have delayed rules.
The federal agency tasked with protecting the public from hazardous products often knows about dangerous and deadly items for years before it takes action.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which oversees about 15,000 types of products, is constrained by a system that is slow to identify deaths and limits the federal government’s power over manufacturers, NBC News revealed in a yearlong project examining the agency.
Manufacturers say restrictions on the CPSC’s authority are necessary guardrails that protect against government overreach and help encourage the development of industry-led voluntary safety standards that are more effective than federal regulation.
But the limits facing America’s consumer product safety system also mean that it can take years, even decades, for safety requirements to be put into place.
As that process grinds on, some of the most vulnerable Americans continue to die from products that both regulators and manufacturers know to be hazardous, reporters found: Dozens of babies have died on infant loungers and nursing pillows, and hundreds of toddlers and young children have been accidentally strangled to death on the cords of window blinds, curtains and shades.
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