Consumer Product Safety Commission

What It Means

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is an independent agency of the U.S. government whose mission is to protect the American public from unreasonable or significant risks of injury or death associated with more than 15,000 types of consumer products, including toys, strollers, bicycles, electrical appliances, clothing, furniture, and household chemicals. The agency was established in 1972 with the passage of the Consumer Product Safety Act. The CPSC’s jurisdiction does not include certain products, such as guns, cosmetics, pesticides, and cars; these and various other products are regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Food and Drug Administration; the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Transportation; and other government agencies.

One of the CPSC’s main functions is to establish product-safety standards to serve as a guide for manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers. Some of these standards are merely voluntary (recommended), while others are mandatory (required). The CPSC also issues product recalls. A recall is a public request for consumers to return a product that has been found to be unsafe or defective, such as a toy that causes choking in a child or an appliance that poses a serious fire hazard. Companies are required to report discoveries of defects and safety hazards associated with their products to the CPSC. The commission also places bans on hazardous materials, such as paint containing lead (a toxic metal found to cause brain damage, especially in children).

In addition to these regulatory functions, the CPSC also conducts research to identify potential product hazards, and it plays a major role in informing and educating the public about product safety.

When Did It Begin

Issues surrounding consumer rights and public safety gained widespread national attention in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely as a result of the political activism of Ralph Nader (b. 1934). Now recognized as the country’s foremost consumer advocate, Nader first made a name for himself in 1965 with the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, a best-selling book that exposed serious safety risks associated with the Chevrolet Corvair and led directly to the passage of national auto-safety standards. In 1969 Nader stirred up further controversy with a small team of law students known as Nader’s Raiders, who published a harsh, embarrassing critique of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), another government agency responsible for protecting consumer rights.

During this period Nader played an important role in creating public demand for corporate responsibility, which led President Nixon to establish the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in 1970 and the CPSC in 1972. The CPSC reached its height during the Carter administration (1977–81), when its staff numbered nearly 978 people. The agency’s resources were drastically reduced during the Reagan administration (1981–89), however, and since then it has been staffed by less than 500 employees.

More Detailed Information

The CPSC is run by a team of commissioners who are appointed by the U.S. president and confirmed by the Senate. One commissioner is selected to serve as chairman. Although the agency was intended to operate with a team of five commissioners, since the late 1980s Congress has only given it enough funding for three. The CPSC has headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), and numerous field offices throughout the country.

The CPSC takes various actions to accomplish its mission of protecting the public from hazardous products.

• It develops voluntary safety standards by cooperating with members of particular industries (for instance, the mattress industry or the toy industry) to identify potential risks and figure out how to make a product safer. This cooperative effort is believed to be effective because the industry knows its products best and is able to contribute its technical expertise to the discussions. The CPSC only imposes mandatory standards when it becomes clear that voluntary standards are being ignored or are otherwise ineffective. For example, during the 1970s the CPSC developed a voluntary agreement with candle manufacturers to stop putting lead in candlewicks. Although the voluntary standard seemed to be effective for some years, a study conducted in 1999 discovered that a small percentage of candlewicks still contained lead. In 2003, then, the CPSC imposed a mandatory ban on manufacturing, importing, or selling candles with lead wicks.
• The commission may enforce mandatory standards by suing violators in federal court (often working with the Department of Justice); if convicted, violators can be forced to pay civil or criminal penalties. The CPSC may also take legal action against companies that fail to report safety hazards discovered in their products.
• The CPSC issues recalls on hazardous consumer products, often in cooperation with the manufacturer. (Usually the manufacturer is eager to recall the product voluntarily in order to show its customers that it values their safety and considers the hazard in question to be an unusual accident.) When a consumer returns a recalled product, he or she may receive a repair, a replacement product, or a refund. Hundreds of products are recalled every year. Over the course of the CPSC’s history, it has issued more than a thousand recalls, resulting in more than 17 billion individual product units being removed from store shelves. The CPSC places a special emphasis on identifying and recalling potentially dangerous toys and children’s products.
• In addition to reports from companies themselves, the CPSC obtains information about unsafe products directly from consumers via its toll-free telephone hotline and a claim form on its website. Another of the CPSC’s primary tools for obtaining information about safety hazards is the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which compiles data on consumer-product-related injuries in U.S. hospital emergency rooms and enables the commission to make statistical injury estimates.
• Beyond the Consumer Product Safety Act, the CPSC also enforces regulations provided by the Flammable Fabrics Act (originally passed in 1953), the Refrigerator Safety Act (originally passed in 1956), the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (originally passed in 1960), and the Poison Prevention Packaging Act (originally passed in 1970). These acts have been variously amended over time.

Recent Trends

When Congress passed the Child Safety Protection Act in 1994, it was considered a major breakthrough for the CPSC. Specifically aimed at preventing choking (the leading cause of toy-related deaths), this legislation requires toy manufacturers to place warning labels on toys containing small parts, such as balls, marbles, and other choking hazards. The label must specify that the toy is not intended for use by children under the age of three. Another key provision of the Child Safety Protection Act was the establishment of a bicycle-helmet safety standard. The standards call for adequate protection of the head and the presence of chin straps strong enough to keep the helmet on a rider’s head even in a crash, collision, or fall. According to some estimates, bicycle helmets decrease the risk of head and brain injuries by 85 percent.

In the first few years of the twenty-first century, the CPSC was also concerned with a growing rise in the number of injuries and fatalities associated with all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs. It was estimated that 740 people died in accidents associated with ATVs in 2003. In 2004 U.S. hospital emergency rooms treated approximately 136,100 injuries associated with the vehicles. About a third of all ATV accident victims were under 16 years old. In the late 1980s the CPSC had negotiated certain safety improvements and implemented a mandatory “consent decree” (a legally enforced agreement) with major ATV manufacturers, but the decree expired in 1997, and safety standards became voluntary. In September 2006 the CPSC launched a major campaign to improve ATV safety. It promoted public awareness of the vehicles’ safety issues and encouraged riders to attend training courses and adopt recommended safety precautions. The campaign also proposed instituting a new set of mandatory safety standards.