It takes years for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to remove dangerous products from the market because of its cumbersome rule-making process and ineffective recalls that don’t incentivize consumers to return or destroy dangerous items.
SNOHOMISH, Wash. – Crystal Ellis easily listed off the names of children who died because a dresser tipped on top of them.They are only but a handful of 193 children that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said have died since 2000 from a clothing-storage unit toppling over. Another 56,000 children were injured but survived.
Congress created the CPSC 50 years ago to regulate everyday products Americans use and to pull them from the market if they are defective. “There are obstacles imbedded in the process that make it so incredibly hard for the agency to successfully complete the process,” said Rachel Weintraub, legislative director and general counsel for the Consumer Federation of America. “As an agency that has a number of tools at its disposal . . . it’s not able to use that power as often or as quickly as it should.
Since 2000, the CPSC has issued warnings about specific products only a dozen times, according to an InvestigateTV analysis of CPSC press releases. Eight of those warnings were issued in the past two years., urging consumers to stop using infant loungers manufactured by Leachco. Two infants had suffocated in the pillow-like loungers – one in 2015 and the other in 2018.
According to court documents, “MALM dressers lacked counterbalancing weight on the back and bottom of the dresser, causing the dresser to be top-heavy and front-heavy, so as to render it unstable even when used in an intended and/or foreseeable manner.” In some cases, products are recalled because they pose a fire hazard or don’t meet flammability standards, even though no injuries were reported. In other cases, they are triggered by fatalities.“The way the law is written now, you’re not allowed to know what’s in your home right now is dangerous,” Ellis said. “They could know for years and years and years, as they did with the dressers as they did with the Rock ‘n Play. That it’s dangerous. It’s eminently dangerous.
InvestigateTV bought a recalled dresser in December for $50 on a neighborhood social media marketplace in Columbus, Ohio. The stamp on the inside drawer shows that the 3-drawer Malm dresser was made in 2009. The recalled dressers were manufactured between 2002 and 2016. But overall, it’s up to consumers to do their own research to find recalled products in their households.
Those products in which InvestigateTv received reports included tents, children’s clothing, play yards for babies, electric fireplaces, candle holders and more. IKEA told InvestigateTV that it has offered remedies – either anchoring kits, refunds and dresser pickups – to 1.78 million Malm customers, leaving about 75% of the items unaccounted for.
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