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Protecting children from dangerous products: fundamental change needed

Correspondence to:
Barry Pless, Montreal Children’s Hospital and McGill University, Montreal, Canada; barry.pless@mcgill.ca

Accepted 28 August 2007

Abbreviations: CPCS, Consumer Product Safety Commission

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This summer many parents in North America (and perhaps elsewhere as well) experienced considerable anxiety when they learned that certain children’s toys were unsafe. Problems with lead paint and with potentially detachable components that could lead to choking had been identified. Most of these products had apparently been imported from China. Mattel, one of the largest toymakers and distributors, recalled hundreds of these toys, and Walmart, one of the largest retailers in the world, offered to reimburse parents if the product was returned.

In the USA the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is responsible for protecting the public from "unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products". Its main approach to doing so is to issue recalls or recall alerts and to announce these both in the media and on its website.¹ A similar, passive approach is used in Canada.

The problem . . . [Full text of this article]