Making a List, Checking it Twice
As you get started on your holiday shopping this weekend–Black Friday and Cyber Monday are upon us–you’ll want to keep your eyes open for a lot of things: a great deal, that can’t-miss gift, a parking...
View ArticleTumbling into a Registry
Remember when you were a kid and you really wanted nothing more than to go out and play, but your parents said you couldn’t until you cleaned your room? Did you try to get by with just shoving...
View ArticleStart Your New Year Off Right
As you turn your calendars, there are a few things you should be keeping in mind. The Commission’s stay on the enforcement of the Third-Party Testing and Certification Rule is gone as of January 1st....
View ArticleExposing Exposure For What It Is
Last Friday the Commission unanimously reached an important, eminently practical, and pretty obvious decision: there are children’s products that have more than 100 parts per million (ppm) of lead that...
View ArticleIt’s He-ere . . .
Today, the CPSC’s children’s product periodic testing and certification rule goes into effect. Perhaps the most sweeping rule in the agency’s history, it was spurred by 2008’s Consumer Product Safety...
View ArticleA Precautionary Tale
Over the weekend, I was having coffee with a long-time friend who told me about her daughter, a young woman in her early twenties who recently had her first baby. This new mother—with no college degree...
View Article1110 Series: If We Wanted Your Opinion…
Over the past couple days, I’ve talked about how the Commission hid the ball on costs and actively avoided clarity for product bans when we proposed to amend our certificates of compliance rule, the...
View ArticleThe Use and Abuse of Voluntary Consensus Standards
The CPSC has issued several recent rules about nursery products, each of which was based on a voluntary consensus standard. Congress directed us to do so in § 104 of the Consumer Product Safety...
View ArticlePlay at Your Own Risk
Recently I was up in New York and met with two insightful and smart people I want to introduce if you do not already know them. Phillip Howard is a lawyer, civic activist and the founder of an...
View ArticleTesting Assumptions
This week I had the pleasure of speaking to the leadership and staff of the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation. The association accredits third party testing laboratories to a wide...
View ArticlePhthalates NPR: Flawed Theory Supported by Flawed Data
On March 16, 2015, the comment period will close for the CPSC’s proposed rule banning specified concentrations of phthalates in children’s toys and child care articles. While those who make and use...
View ArticlePhthalates NPR: A No-Win for CPSC
Assuming that the Commission does not vote to again extend it, the period for filing comments on its proposal to permanently ban certain phthalates closes in a few days. At that point the monkey will...
View ArticleDefining “Wooden-Headedness”
In The March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman writes: Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkable large role in government. It consists of assessing a...
View ArticleAll I Want for Christmas Is . . .
A lifetime government job. And if the commissioners at the CPSC grant tihe pending pettion to ban certain flame retardants, the staffers working on the ban will get that wish. Earlier this month, the...
View ArticleFighting the Magnet Wars
This morning I watched the oral arguments before the CPSC in the staff appeal of the ALJ’s decision in the Zen Magnets case. I felt as if I was watching World War One trench warfare in modern dress....
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