 All righty, welcome back to our final panel. We are pleased to have with us for this panel, Ms. Daniel Iverson for the American Apparel Footwear Association, Mr. Al Silverberg from selectshops.com and I think selectblinds.com, Mr. Ted Alcorn from Every Town for Gun Safety, Ms. Liz Hitchcock for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, and Dr. Stephanie Fox Rawlings from the National Center for Health Research. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Ms. Iverson, please, if you will. Good afternoon, my name is Danielle Iverson and I'm Manager of Government Relations with the American Apparel Footwear Association, also known as AAFA. On behalf of AAFA, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the commission's budget priorities for fiscal year 2017 and 2018. AAFA is a national trade association representing apparel and footwear industry, including its suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and service providers. Our industry accounts for more than 4 million US employees and more than 361 billion in retail sales each year. Product safety is of the utmost importance for AAFA member companies. To support our members, many of whom are engaged in the production and sale of children's clothing and footwear, AAFA has taken the lead in educating the industry on the development, interpretation, and implementation of product safety regulations. Thank you to many of you as well as commission staff who have shared your time and expertise by attending a number of our AAFA product safety events. AAFA offers the following recommendation on the priorities the commission should consider emphasizing and dedicating resources toward in the fiscal year 2017 operating plan and the fiscal year 2018 congressional budget request. International testing harmonization and mutual recognition of standards. AAFA firmly believes in the need for international testing harmonization as well as mutual recognition of testing to support product compliance and certification. When testing for compliance with a particular regulation, duplicative testing is counterproductive and does not provide any greater assurance of compliance. Presently, the commission has the opportunity through the transatlantic trade and investment partnership negotiations between the European Union and the United States to promote global harmonization and mutual recognition of standards. European negotiators have signaled their interest in pursuing regulatory harmonization initiatives with respect to textiles and apparel and the forthcoming TTIP trade agreement. Such an initiative could provide provisions relating to labeling, safety, market-driven standards and bilateral cooperation. AAFA has long recommended including regulatory harmonization for both footwear and apparel and the TTIP. Most recently at a stakeholders meeting during the 13 round of talks in New York and echoed last week in a joint footwear statement which I believe everyone on the commission received. We strongly support the intention to harmonize technical regulations and approaches to guarantee product safety and consumer protection. Ideally, the US and EU should work to remove unnecessary and redundant testing by expanding of acceptance of conformity assessment bodies and moving towards a single international standard test method. Lastly, we note that an amendment to the CPSC's fiscal year 2014 operating plan, which passed 3-1, calls for guidance to be issued to the regulated community to ease unnecessary burdensome duplicative testing. And I quote, the commission also directs staff to draft a statement of policy that sets forth a protocol for the submission of requests for determinations of equivalency between tests administered in CPSC regulations and comparable tests administered in international standards. Such protocol at minimum will shall require requests for equivalency determinations to establish that the testing requirements of any alternative tests administered in an international standard will assure compliance with all applicable children's products, safety rules, regulations, standards or bans and are as stringent or more so, including third party testing will required as the current CPSC's testing requirements end quote. We urge the commission to revisit the aforementioned amendment. Let me conclude by again urging the commission to engage with the US negotiating team so that the TTIP outcome has regulatory coherence without sacrificing product safety. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments and suggestions. AFA looks forward to working with the commission and furthering our collaborative relationship of ensuring product safety. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Iverson. Mr. Silverberg. Good afternoon. Select lines is an online retailer of window coverings and I've made the trip from Phoenix to request for 2017 and 18 priorities to include and emphasize the need for court free legislation in the window covering industry. The reason is very simple. Window blinds with cords have killed or seriously injured on average 20 children a year. This is not new, it has been going on and has been documented since 1983, 33 years. There's no magic associated with that date. It just happens to be when this preventable hazard began being tracked. It's amazing to me that there are so many people that have no idea about these risks. I didn't know about it for years myself. A mandate to go cordless is only part of what we are requesting. We urge you to allocate sufficient funds to create, launch and maintain a public awareness campaign. Select Blinds is a small business and because of that it might be easier for us to make the move to only cordless but it doesn't take decades. We made the decision known to our suppliers in November of 2015. At that time we had targeted January 2017 as the transition timing but as soon as we announced that I knew there was no way we could wait that long. We cut the cords on March 31st of this year, five months from notice to implementation. There are now three cordless only retailers. Select Blinds.com, Target and Ikea. Select Blinds is the only retailer that is 100% cordless including custom product. Target and Ikea have limited their offering to stock or what is referred to as cut down product. Either way there was one simple reason why the three of us were able to make the change. Commitment. Select Blinds made the decision because we believe it to be the right decision. While we cannot force another retailer or the manufacturing community to follow suit, we feel with the right coordination of efforts this issue can be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned parties. Three more retailers will join the cord free commitment. Home Depot, Lowe's and Walmart. The date that I heard was January 2018. That's 19 kids, I mean 19 months from now. Although this is a significant move, it leaves all custom products out of the equation. Upgrading the cordless is not a cost prohibitive move. First of all, there are three categories that have zero cost impact. Cutters, vertical blinds and roller solar shades. These three categories account for about 30% of online sales. It's probably higher with in-home design consultants. Beyond those three categories, every blind or shade category can readily be made with a cordless lift or cord inaccessible lift. The big guys already have the technology. There are also products like the fashion wand from safety shade that transforms a corded shade to a cord inaccessible shade. Our most popular product is the cell shade or honeycomb shade. It cannot be that expensive to make them cordless. We buy a stock cordless cell shade for well under $40 on the most popular sizes. The vendor from whom we source this product is making money, I'm sure. So the real cost of an entire cordless shade including freight to get it delivered to anywhere in the lower 48 States is less than $30. That's a finished product delivered. So it can be done by every custom manufacturer. Select Blinds has made the move. We are optimizing our product assortment daily. We would be in a more competitive landscape if we had every product on our site that our competition can offer. But even so, we are succeeding as a business entity with 100% cordless self-imposed mandate. I've been in the window covering business for almost 11 years. Prior to that, I ran a company called Uniden. We were the number one market share brand in the cordless phone business. I bring this up for a few reasons. One, I understand the way to develop products. I know how to communicate with the engineers whether electrical, mechanical, or other. Two, I have been able to get products that product development teams don't believe can be brought to market from concept to mass production dozens of times. Three, new products are the lifeblood of any organization. They give the consuming public a reason to buy. This is a beautiful thing. It adds jobs in the industry. The time for discussion is over. The hope for industry self-regulation has come and gone. A mandate is needed, and that is what we are here to ask for. The industry is capable of doing this. Perhaps they just need to approach it in a new way. I'd like to suggest a mandate for all product to be cord free by January 1st, 2018. I'd like to suggest that the mandate include corroboration between retailers and manufacturers and a committee be formed by September 1st, 2016 to oversee the progress. This is needed in order to get the focus where it should be. Put my name in the mix. I'm glad to be part of it. Let's quit playing Russian roulette with the lives of our kids. Issue a mandate. Do it now. Do it before this tragedy touches one of you, one of our congressional members, or one of the key executives at the helm of a window covering company, because that eventuality is very real, and then it will be too late for you to say that the reason you are issuing a mandate is because it's the right thing to do. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak. Thank you, Mr. Silverberg, Mr. Alcorn. Good afternoon, Chair Kaye, and thank you for the opportunity to present my testimony today. My name is Ted Alcorn, and I'm the research director for Everytown for Gun Safety. Everytown is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country, with more than three million supporters and more than 100,000 donors, including moms, mayors, survivors, and everyday Americans who are fighting for public safety measures that respect the Second Amendment and help save lives. I'm here today to address the burden of injuries inflicted by children who gain access to and unintentionally discharged firearms, an area of great concern to the public, and one that the commission has authority to address, and to urge the commission to use its authority to enhance the surveillance of unintentional shootings of children. In 2013, consistent with the commission's authority to regulate safe storage devices, such as trigger locks and gun safes, the president of the United States asked the commission to review and enhance the standards for those devices. A process I understand is now underway. We know that effective, evidence-based interventions rely on a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the problem they are addressing. Unfortunately, current surveillance of unintentional shootings by children is woefully inadequate. In 2013, employing press reports in the media, every town identified 100 children, 14 and under, who died due to unintentional firearm injuries, nearly 50% more than the data, the best national data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reflect. Furthermore, even our count was limited since it did not capture incidents in which a child fired a gun but harmed someone older, nor incidents in which the victim was injured but did not die. So last year, again, using just press reports, every town created and has since maintained an open-source index of all incidents in which a minor unintentionally fired a gun and harmed or killed someone. We consult with local law enforcement to confirm the details as necessary and the data we collect are publicly available on our website, everytownresearch.org. And the patterns they illustrate could inform further approaches to reducing these injuries. In 2015, every town identified 278 unintentional child shootings, which resulted in 88 deaths and 194 injuries. As of June 1st this year, we already identified 100 and as of today, we've identified over 110 further shootings. Three-year-olds pulled the trigger more than children of any other age. And unlike shootings involving older children who typically harm another child, the vast majority of these incidents involving toddlers, the toddler shoots themself. We observe enormous variation across states in the rates of unintentional child shootings. Controlling for population Alaska experienced these tragedies 30 times more frequently than California. Most important from the standpoint of prevention, which is our goal, was the apparent role played by the responsible storage of firearms. Whereas fewer than 15% of gun-owning households with children report storing their firearms unlocked and loaded or with ammunition, those households accounted for more than two-thirds of the unintentional child shootings we observed. Though the public sometimes refers to shootings like these as accidents, a word that suggests they occur by chance, unforeseen, without reason, every town is very deliberate in describing these as not an accident. Because these tragedies are eminently preventable, if our society increasingly adopts norms of storing guns responsibly and evaluates our success at doing so. To promote that change in behavior, every town has developed public education campaign called Be Smart, which gives gun owners and non-gun owners alike a way to share information about responsible firearm storage in their communities. And organizations across the spectrum run similar programs from the Brady Centers, ask campaign to the firearm trade industries projects child safe. But to the measure the effectiveness of any individual campaign from any other organization, it's essential to have an accurate measure of the outcome of interest. The commission plays an important role estimating rates of non-fatal injuries from all types through the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, NICE. But more accurate information about unintentional child shootings will be critical for assessing the effect of current public health approaches. The commission should adopt measures to improve surveillance of unintentional child shootings through the NICE system. And the commission might also consider establishing an open source, an open source measure of these shootings. Every town's index demonstrates the reach of online media for supporting these efforts and the Bureau of Justice statistics recently adopted similar tools for tracking law enforcement involved shootings which had been undercounted previously. To be sure, one agency alone cannot solve this complex problem and other agencies must also play a role. It's essential to measure how gun storage behavior has changed over time, state by state. And the CDC ceased measuring this in 2004 when questions relating to firearm storage were dropped from their national behavioral risk factor surveillance system, BRFIS. The BRFIS coordinators should reintroduce those questions. Unintentional child shootings account for just a fraction of the tens of thousands of firearm-related injuries in the United States each year, but few cry out so strongly for prevention. Even one preventable firearm injury or death of a child is one too many and I believe the commission has an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to addressing this problem and it will save lives. Thank you, Mr. Elkhorn, Ms. Hitchcock. Good afternoon, Chairman Kay and commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to provide our thoughts regarding the commission's agenda and priorities for fiscal years 2017 and 2018. My name is Liz Hitchcock and I'm the legislative director for Safer Chemicals Healthy Families. I'm providing testimony today on behalf of my organization and Safer States. Safer Chemicals Healthy Families is a nationwide coalition representing more than 450 organizations and businesses, including parents, health professionals, advocates for people with learning and developmental disabilities, reproductive health advocates, environmentalists, organized labor and businesses from across the nation, including some groups who have already testified today. Safer States is a network of diverse environmental health coalitions and organizations in states across the country that believe families, communities, and then the environment should be protected from the devastating impacts of our society's heavy use of chemicals. Our diverse coalitions are united by our common concern about toxic chemicals in our homes and workplaces and in the products we use every day. We work for reform of our outdated toxic chemical laws, work with retailers to phase out hazardous chemicals from the marketplace and educate the public about ways to protect our families from toxic chemicals. Over the remainder of FY 2017 and 2018, we urged the commission to expand its oversight and regulation of consumer products containing harmful and environmentally harmful chemicals, making full use of its authority under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, and the other statutes enforced by the commission. In addition, we urged the commission to make it a priority to move forward with rulemaking banning consumer products containing a class of toxic flame retardant chemicals as requested in the petition submitted in June 2015 by groups including Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Earth Justice, and the International Association of Firefighters. While we appreciate the commission's work over the past several years to implement the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act's regulation of toxic lead and phthalates in children's products, the work shouldn't end there. American families are more aware than ever that toxic chemicals can be found in products in our children's play rooms, in our living rooms and kitchens, in hospitals and healthcare facilities, and in our workplaces with ongoing and irreparable harm to our family's health. The presence of toxic chemicals in childcare products and children's products is one of many exposures to hazardous chemicals that our families face as a result of contact with consumer products. The Consumer Product Safety Commission should broaden the scope of consumer products it reviews for the presence of and health risks from hazardous chemicals and then take necessary action to protect public health, accounting for the increased vulnerability of certain populations, including children and pregnant women. Thanks to state chemical reporting requirements in Maine, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state, our state partners have and will continue to produce reports identifying toxics and consumer products that we urge the commission to take note of and to begin to use its authority to protect the public from these dangerous chemicals. In 2008, the Maine legislature passed one of the first and strongest state-based chemical policy reform laws known as the Kids Safe Products Act. Under Maine's law, manufacturers must disclose their use of high priority chemicals of concern in consumer products sold in the state. In 2014, the law was expanded to require the reporting of phthalates by some manufacturers. The report linked to my written testimony, What Stinks, prepared by our partners at the Environmental Health Strategy Center, analyzes the results of that public reporting, including data on the use of phthalates showing that hormone disrupting chemicals are used in a broader range of household products than previously known. In addition to phthalates in clothing and footwear, toys and games, a total of 130 products containing four types of phthalates were reported by 14 manufacturers in household paints and primers, in cleansers, in disinfectants and deodorizers. In 2008, Washington State passed the Children's Safe Products Act, setting requirements for makers of children's products being sold in Washington to report to the state if these products contain chemicals on a list of 66 chemicals of high-concerned children. Manufacture reporting began phasing in in 2012 and in 2014, an analysis of that reporting by our partners at the Washington Toxics Coalition called What's On Your List, summarized the chemicals and products reported over a six-month period in 2013. Overall, there were 4,605 reports of such chemicals reported in children's products, such as toys, clothing, baby safety products, embedding, a total of 78 companies, such as Walmart, Target, Safeway, Walgreens, and Toys R Us reported products containing hazardous chemicals, a total of 49 chemicals such as formaldehyde, bisphenol A, parabens, phthalates, heavy metals, and industrial solvents were reported with health effects that include carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, and developmental or reproductive toxicity. We anticipate that manufacturer reported data required by the 2014 Vermont law will become available later this year. Manufacturers of products for children under 12 are required to report the presence of 66 chemicals of concern down to the individual product level, and this new level of data will provide valuable information that will help prioritize products and categories of products for review. The commission should use the data generated by these state programs as a roadmap to additional products that require further evaluation and potential action to protect the health of children from these dangerous chemicals. In addition, we urge the commission to exercise its authority under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act to ban products containing toxic chemical flame retardants. In spite of the fact that these chemicals have been associated with serious human health problems, including cancer, reduced sperm count, increased time to pregnancy, impaired memory, learning deficits, hormone disruption, lowered immunity, they continue to be used at high levels in consumer products. The comments and testimony previously submitted to the commission by our partners provide a strong basis for moving forward with the requested rulemaking. These chemicals migrate continuously out from everyday household products into the air and dust when we sit on a sofa or put a baby to sleep on a crib's mattress. As a result, more than 97% of US residents have measurable quantities of toxic organohalogen flame retardants in their blood. Children are particularly at risk because they come into greater contact with household dust than adults. Studies show that children who's developing brains and reproductive organs are the most vulnerable have three to five times higher levels than their parents. In conclusion, we urge you to act on the petition to regulate products containing toxic chemical flame retardants and to consider action to restrict dangerous chemical exposures from other consumer products. We again thank the commission for this opportunity to comment on your future activities and priorities, and we look forward to continuing to work with you on your important mission. Thank you, Ms. Ichka, Dr. Fox Rawlings. Thank you for the opportunity, Chairman and commissioners. I'm speaking today on behalf of our president, Dr. Diana Zuckerman, who cannot be here today. The National Center for Health Research is a nonprofit research center staffed by scientists, medical professionals, and health experts who analyze and review research on a range of health issues. We respect the essential role that the CPSC has as well as the challenges that you face in selecting the most important priorities. Thalates and flame retardants need to be among your top priorities because they are in all of our homes and they migrate from products into our daily environment. Multiple thalate metabolites and flame retardants are detectable in nearly all people in the U.S. And scientists agree that their impact on health can be dangerous and long-lasting. First, most, so these two topics have been discussed very many times today, so I'm gonna be very brief in our comments. So first I wanna talk about the additional bands on thalates and children's toys and care products. We applaud the current permanent and temporary bands on six thalates and children's toys and child care articles. However, these bands need to be extended. The previous rule proposed last year, last spring in 2015, following the CHAP recommendations would provide additional protections against children. We support the permanent bands on four additional thalates, D-I-B-P, D-P-E-N-P, D-H-E-X-P and D-C-H-P, and making permanent the intern band on D-I-N-P. However, the CHAP report also recommended an intern band on D-I-O-P, which should also be included in the rule. We strongly disagree with the proposal to lift the intern bands on D-N-O-P and D-I-D-P. Well, they may not be associated with anti-androgenicity. They are associated with organ toxicity and altered development. The CHAP report also recommended additional studies on three other phalates, D-M-P, D-P-H-P and D-E-P, and six thalate alternatives, and the final rule should include a timeline for the completion of these studies. In summary, we strongly urge the CPSC to finalize the proposed rule on thalates in children's toys and child care articles, including consideration of our safety concerns. It is also important for the CPSC to expand this work on thalates to include safeguards for older children. There's increasing evidence for the impact of these chemicals on early puberty, which itself is associated with drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and suicide. Nick's band's on flame retardants. The CPSC has the responsibility and the ability to protect consumers from toxic flame retardants under the Federal Hazardous Substance Act. We agree with other groups commenting today that the CPSC should propose and finalize regulations that would ban additive non-polymeric organohalagen flame retardants in four categories of household products as proposed in potential number HP15-1. Like thalates, these chemicals move from products into our daily environment, and from there into consumers' bodies where they can cause irreparable harm. All of the organohalagen flame retardants studied have been associated with chronic health effects. The most well-studied organohalagen flame retardants are the PBDEs, which have been phased out due and part to the effects on human health. The alternatives in the same class are proving to have similar problems. These alternatives are found in a large percentage of people tested in various communities. They have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, developmental toxicity, endocrine disruptor, and behavioral changes in models and or humans. We strongly urge the CPSC to develop and finalize a ban on these chemicals and propose residential products to protect consumers from their toxic effects. In conclusion, we urge the CPSC to prioritize the research and rulemaking to limit exposure of consumers, and especially children, from phallus and flame retardants that have been found to negatively impact health and development. We look forward to working with you on these issues. Thank you for your time and consideration of our views. Thank you, Dr. Fox-Rollings. I'll just start my round of questioning with you and Ms. Hitchcock, and I don't know if you hear earlier when Mr. Pinchina from the breast cancer fund was speaking, I'll reiterate my concern at the public policy level. Before I came to the commission, I remember when our first child was born to scare about BPA and Ms. Hitchcock, you mentioned BPA on the list, and so everybody scrambled to take BPA out of their products, and as parents, you started looking for BPA-free labels, and I remember going around looking, and you would have this sense of relief if you saw something that didn't say BPA on it, you're like, we're safe, and that's really the key, is that parents think if a chemical is taken out, then everything's okay, and then of course, lo and behold, not surprisingly, PPS apparently was substituted, and there are concerns about what BPS means, and that's really at the root of my dilemma in this position and the way I approach it is, I wanna make sure whatever I'm participating in is definitively making people safer when it comes to chemical exposure, and so, and again, I'd like to avoid TOSCA reform because I think that's a separate issue to some extent, just as we consider whether it's issues that are currently in front of us or new chemical-related issues, how do we have assurance from a scientific perspective that if we take action against a chemical or a class of chemicals, that we are definitively making people safer as opposed to just definitively acting against that chemical? I think that's the $64,000 question, although with inflation, who knows how big a question I've just asked. You're absolutely right to be concerned about regrettable substitutions of the next chemical in line, and BPA and BPS are a very good example. We have lacked a comprehensive chemicals policy. We have, the Congress has just passed and the President has on his desk a reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act, which you've said you're avoiding, so I won't dive any farther in, but we do have concern about substitutions and we have concern about rational substitutions. There are, though, chemicals that we have a large body of scientific evidence that they cause harm and we need to take action and I move us into the flame retardant's world. Where we have a large volume of scientific evidence to act upon these chemicals, let's do the thing that we know is the right thing to do. Let's guard against regrettable substitutions and let's remain attentive and vigilant about the next thing coming down and hopefully we will begin to review new chemicals coming onto the market more carefully, but we ask the commission to act under its authorities to take action on the things that we already know and take action to remove these chemicals that we know are causing harm from everyday consumer products that our children are coming into contact with. Thank you, Doctor. You want to add anything? I pretty much would say the same thing. I think as much as we would like to avoid regrettable substitution, in some ways there's not much we can do unless we can specify testing before chemicals go on the market. So just saying replacing this bad chemical, we may get another bad chemical as a very big problem and so even though we might get something else as bad, we have to stay on top of it, we have to study it, but we can't keep allowing that to allow bad chemicals that are causing harm in the marketplace. And thank you for that. I just find it just the whole public policy apparatus very frustrating because for the children that are harmed by whatever this generation's wave of chemicals are, they're harmed and that harm is very unlikely to be undone and we learn at their expense and there has to be a better way to do it. Mr. Alcorn, thank you for coming in. I just have to ask briefly since we've not had your presence before or your organization's presence before, I'm just curious how you even heard that we're having a priorities hearing. Well, we have been working on this issue for almost 10 years now as an organization, but as I said, we began tracking the unintentional child shootings most closely in 2013 and as it's become an issue of greater concern amongst the volunteers that we have around the country, the volunteer indicated that this was a hearing that would be important to communicate some of our findings at. Got it, that's good to know. And as we mentioned in the beginning this morning, we're eager to have more robust participation so it's good to know that the word is getting out. On the issue of gun containers and gun locks, when as you mentioned, the vice president did reach out and asked the commission to take a role in it and so we did and we engaged experts and we asked the ASTM leadership to reopen the standards which they did and then what ended up happening, I don't know if you participated in it at all, it turns out there's really, as far as we could tell, basically there's only one or two people in the entire country who can truly figure out how to defeat these devices in such a way as to show how much the standard has to improve. They participated for a while in the standards process. Everybody came together, CPSC staff was there. They promised to offer suggestions and then they just sort of disappeared and the frustration is that we didn't have anyone else the technical expertise who could look at these two standards and say this is what needs to happen and what was fascinating about these two individuals and I went out and met with them in South Dakota a few years ago is that they still retained the innocence and the creativity of the way a child can look at a product in a way to defeat it and they would see a product and a mechanism or weigh into that item in a way an adult wouldn't think about. We put limitations on our way of thinking. We have most of us as some of us hopefully have reality imposing some type of burden on us and these guys somehow still had that child-like approach and so they just had a unique way of doing it and that's a very long-winded way of saying if you know anyone else who has expertise in gun locks and gun safes who can participate in the ASTM process that would be very helpful. I think that the map forward from my perspective was to update those two standards and then go to California and engage the state of California and see if they were willing to actually adopt the ASTM standards as well which would de facto make it nationwide and I'm sure as I mentioned that Commissioner Morales is gonna ask about a poster furniture during his time but I do think that that would be a critical step to updating those two standards because having done the work on it they are inadequate from a technical standpoint. They just don't provide the level of protection that I think is needed so please reach out to my office if you have technical experts who can participate in that. I'd appreciate that. I'd be happy to do so. Thank you, Mr. Silverberg. Thank you so much for coming. What's the secret? We've been hearing for decades, not thankfully I have not been alive that long at least in this capacity but the agency has been hearing for decades this is an unsolvable problem that can't happen and even for those who are willing to switch over it's gonna take years and years and this is very technically difficult and impossible to provide consumer choice yet somehow you had these magical conversations with your suppliers who I assume are available to other companies as suppliers. What did you do that made a difference that others have not been able to figure out? I drew a line in the sand. There's not a house in the United States that cannot be covered with window coverings cordless. Period. And still maintain consumer choice and do it so in an economical way? Absolutely. There's stock product right now that's cordless available. There's custom product right now that's cordless available and I'm not sure what the reasoning is to talk about stock product only. Custom product is more easily configured by the manufacturer here in the US or the fabricator here in the US and so it's not a cost issue. All the engineering resources of the manufacturers were put to this challenge it would be solved so quickly. There are products that are available today as I said that have no cost impact whatsoever to the consumer that are available cordless or corded at the same price. Engineers can do amazing things. They really can. You give them, in fact they prefer to be challenged on a daily basis. It is fulfilling for them in their career and to continue to build the same product with only changing colors or changing sizes it can't be self-fulfilling for an engineer. I don't get it, Chairman. I just don't get it. It can be done, it should be done and it's not a cost prohibitive venture. Well I share your belief in the ingenuity and the creativity of industry and I'm optimistic that like you said with the right mindset we can get there. This has been one of the highest priorities that I've brought to this position from my perspective because it is solvable it hasn't been going on so long and I think enough is enough. Are you available if the industry does reopen the standard to participate in that and lend your expertise? Absolutely. I'd be glad to do it. Thank you. And as I was saying with my last few seconds I was just curious to know how large a statue did you remember as erect in honor of Commissioner Morozovic for his GCC proposal that he put through? And I was here turning off people's microphones and I forgot to turn my own on it. We just had Commissioner Morozovic at our product safety east conference in New York and that was really a great opportunity as I mentioned before for the commission really to convey the mission to our members and hear feedback. So obviously we welcome everyone here to participate in further events with AAFA. Thank you. Great, thank you for that. Commissioner Robinson. Thank you. Mr. Alcorn, I'm gonna start with you and just focus on something different in your presentation. I know I'm not alone in being thoroughly disgusted at the gun deaths in this country and the graph yesterday in the New York Times that brought home what we all sort of know but I don't know if you saw it or not but literally the US is 500% higher than the next closest country in terms of gun deaths in this country. And I know your organization as I understand it's focused on gun violence and obviously this agency is more focused on what can be done. We have very limited jurisdiction. But obviously the only thing we could ever no matter what do is address accidental deaths. It doesn't take very long in government to appreciate how outrageous the ways are in which the hands of government agencies have been tied with respect to making guns safer even with gathering data about gun deaths. Our hands are tied. As one commentator recently said we regulate toys so why not guns? Our restriction from Congress comes first in defining a consumer product which does not include firearms or ammunition and then we're specifically directed that we shall make no ruling or order that restricts the manufacturer's sale of firearms, firearms ammunition or components of firearms ammunition including black powder or gun powder for firearms and we're the Consumer Product Safety Commission but it is what it is. But I thank you for what you're doing and I agree with you that the data are absolutely critical and they're tough to find. And I know you're using press reports. I know a couple years ago, I guess it was back in 2013 the New York Times, again I'm sure you saw I did the study of kids involved in deaths with guns that were labeled as homicides rather than accidents so that the numbers that were being used by associations like the NRA to argue that there wasn't a problem were half what the real numbers were because of this misnomer of what happens when even an infant shoots a baby they were labeling it as homicide. So the focus of your presentation as I read it was on our NICE system so I just wanted to tell you a couple things. First of all we, all of us here appreciate that the NICE system is the gold standard but it's still less than a hundred emergency departments at hospitals in the United States. But our NICE coding manual does include separate codes for gun locks and gun safes and we collect the product information that's publicly available and searchable on those products. However, we also collect incident data that involves unintentional shootings through NICE but we don't make it public because of our restriction in consumer products not including firearms. So we do gather that data and we gather both for intentional and unintentional shootings for the CDC and we've been doing that since 1993 per an interagency agreement and as I understand it we receive about 3,500 reports a year and the CPSC cannot release that. However, the CDC has releases it on the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research. So if you haven't heard of that which I hadn't until I read your presentation and checked out what we gather you might wanna check that out because I'm told that 22% of the firearm cases collected are classified as unintentional. So that may be something that your organization might be able to use and anything that you get by way of data that might be useful for us we would appreciate you sharing that with us as well. Mr. Silberberg, thank you, thank you thank you for going 100% cordless. Certainly I think all of us appreciate that that technology's there that it's not expensive. We could do it, but it's been decades that we've been trying to get industry to adopt a voluntary standard. Do you ask for a mandate? I'm sure you know that for us to do a mandatory standard is a Herculean task, particularly in this area where there are so many cords and I am delighted to hear that you respond to the chair's question that you would participate if we were to open the standard again. Have you done so in the past? Have you participated in any voluntary standard? I have not. Good, okay. But I'll grow my hair. I don't mean good that you haven't, I mean good that you have. I'll grow my hair to take on that Herculean effort. So I'm delighted that you will do that, particularly with respect to a hidden hazard like this. Ms. Hitchcock, I know you know that we're gonna be receiving a package on phthalates and the non-polymeric additive organohalogens petition that was and we should be receiving that shortly. You have said that you think the commission should broaden the scope of consumer products that it reviews for the presence and risk of hazardous chemicals and I'm just curious as to whether you know of any specific products or product categories that you think that we should be reviewing that we're not reviewing. In my testimony I linked to two reports from our state partners in Maine and in Washington state where they are reviewing the results of the reporting under their state laws and I'm looking at a chart here where they found chemicals of concern in children's clothing and footwear, in toys which obviously you're obviously focused on. We also found tableware in personal care products, and in cleansers, in items found in the kitchen. So we would look to those reports to find the additional products that aren't covered as children's products or for a child under the age of 12. So those are product categories. Are you aware of chemical categories that we are not considering that we should be considering? I'm happy to hear that you're considering a flame retardant's petition. There are additional chemical categories like formaldehyde, parabens, other flame retardants and other phthalates beyond those covered under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. In the category of phthalates, yeah. Okay, and I'd be interested in both yours and Dr. Fox Rowling's comments on whether, I hope that you reviewed our very robust hearing on the group, on the petition for the non-polymeric organohalogens that are additive and in four product categories as I'm sure you know. But I guess I'd be interested in your comments since you were not at that hearing on whether you think that that's an appropriate categorization because this is new for us to look at a whole category of flame retardants. It seems fairly reasonable to me. I mean, yeah, it's a very big category in some cases, but from what's been studied and the characteristics of those chemicals, it looks like there is a very reasonable chance that the characteristics seen in a good portion of these are going to expand to the rest of them. And by being able to look at a whole category like this, we can avoid the regrettable substitution like we're seeing with some of the phthalates and with the BPAs and BPS. So I think it is reasonable. So let me follow up with if we limit this to the four categories that are in the petition which are durable infant and toddler products, residential upholstered furniture, mattresses and mattress pads and plastic casings of electronic devices. My question is are either of you aware in those four product categories of any safe non-polymeric additive organohalogens? I'm deferring my, okay. I just, and if you don't know that's fine, I just. I can't go into any of the details right now. I can definitely look into the research and let you know, but I know there are alternatives for flame retardants that are safer for, as far as I've been able to understand most categories of consumer products. And a lot of these can, the standards can still be met with even non-flame retardants. So I'm not sure for specifics on which ones require those types of flame retardants. Okay, thank you. And Ms. Iverson, nice to see you again. I'm sure you know that we're not participating in TTIP and we have no intention in doing so because unlike some of our sister agencies, we don't have any mission related to trade. So that's the reason we're not participating. But my question of you is have you approached any of our European Union counterparts to see their attitude about harmonizing because we would love to harmonize but we're not gonna harmonize down, as you know. Yes, I do know that. So I've read some of the commissions work and I know that that's a major concern in the area of watering down standard. So we are working with our European partners and I know that this is gonna be a really important task and I know that it's gonna be difficult and that the commission has already looked into this. So we continue to work on both sides but I can say that as I mentioned in my testimony, European regulators are signaling that there's gonna be a textile provision in the next round. So I understand that the CPSC has no intention of working in this area but there are areas of regulatory coherence that we think you can be a part of. So. Good, good. And I just, all of us supported Commissioner Mohorovic's proposal. As you know, with respect to the enforcement policy and I thank you for your work with him on this common sense proposal. Thank you and I thank the commission for that as well. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson, Commissioner Berkel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all of our panelists for being here today and for taking the time out to provide your insights into these very important issues. Dr. Fox Rawlings, in your testimony, well it's actually it, Diana, Dr. Zuckerman. On the bottom of the first page, it says it's important for CPSC to expand its work on phthalates to include safeguards for older children. There is increasing evidence of the impact of these chemicals on early puberty, which itself is associated with drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and suicide. Can you provide us with that research that's been done in those numbers that you're referring to here? I cannot, but I can talk to Diana and have that sent to you. Very good, okay, I appreciate that, thank you. We did hear in the comments with regards to phthalates, the regrettable substitutes and the concerns for substituting one known entity and one known chemical with another one that we don't know anything about. But as you well know that the phthalates package is being worked on by our staff. It is extremely complex. There were several, as you know, many, many comments on it. They're working on, working through those comments and it's a process and we expect to see that package hopefully by the end of this fiscal year. So thank you for your concerns and your thoughts on the phthalate issue. Mr. Silverberg, before I have a couple of questions for you, I do wanna say something because both of my colleagues have said this and I want to make sure that the information out there is accurate. So we may have heard that it can't be done but I don't think we're hearing that now. I think that industry has made it clear to the agency that the technology exists, it's available, consumers have a choice and it can be done. And the question is how do we find a way forward? So that may have been the issue a few years ago but now the issue, I think there's no dispute that the technology is available. And this isn't directed at you, this is directed at my colleagues that we did hear that in the past but since I've been here, I've heard from industry and as I mentioned this morning, I've been to the three major manufacturers of them and they are willing, interested and able to produce cordless products and certainly products with inaccessible cords and that's very important to what we're talking about here today. When you made the change, can you talk to us about what happened to the price of the blind? Absolutely, it went up, it cost more. In some cases it cost a little more, in some cases it cost not much more than a little more but based on the price of the product to begin with the ratio of the upcharge was such that it put us in an uncompetitive position. That's easily rectified by mass production of cordless blinds. With volume comes efficiencies and cost reduction and so if the manufacturers have to make them all cordless, you will see the cost come down dramatically very quickly. Okay, that is certainly an acceptable theory, right? That when we do things in mass production the price comes down but I think the difference in, Commissioner Robinson continues to say this, that we for section nine rulemaking have extremely difficult obstacles to overcome and I think what's key here in your testimony and your being here and the decision you made is a business decision that you made, a commendable one but you made the decision and that's different than having it be imposed on you and so I think you should be commended for making that decision and it was a business decision you made so I just wanna point that out. I do wanna emphasize that the technology is available. I don't think there's any dispute. Major manufacturers have made that clear and now the question is how do we find a way forward to get to a voluntary standard that addresses this issue so that's all I have, Mr. Chairman, I thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Buerkle, Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you panelists for appearing today especially new participants so it's always good to see other associations with interests that recognize that it's important to visit with the CPSC and Mr. Silverberg, thank you for your long travel. If you could engage me, I'm not as, forgive me, I'm not as familiar with selectblinds.com. You mentioned you're an online retailer. Have you always been an online retailer? Yes. You have for the 11 years, I think you've been in business. Do you sell to subcontractors and contractors or is it a direct-to-consumer business? It's primarily direct-to-consumer but we do have a dealer division which is suffering more than the general part of the business. What percent of your business do you think is direct-to-consumer? You had a guess? 95%. 95%, direct-to-consumers, writing you, selecting credit card information and you cut a P.O. and you send product out. Yes. Excellent. Now, you made the decision to go cordless in November of 2015. Tell me about that decision-making. Was it, did you, was it your team? Is it, tell me a little bit about that moment that you decided, look, we're gonna make a business decision and we're gonna go completely cordless. I drove it 100%. I have understood that window-blind cords were killing kids when I heard the first recall or retrofit on Roman shades. Right. And coming from an industry where I was cutting the cords previously in consumer electronics with telephones. Yeah. Right, I've been cutting the cords my whole life. But I don't know what the trigger was that hit me so hard, but it just really impacted me that we were selling a product that is dangerous to kids. CPSC, compliant product, is killing kids still. And I just couldn't get up in the morning, look myself in the eye in the mirror and go to work knowing that we were selling a product that's dangerous to kids. These are innocence. It's our responsibility to give them the most safe environment that we possibly can. And to cut the cord is not cost prohibitive and what parent wouldn't pay $20 or $30 or $40 more a window to make sure they have a safe product for their children. Right. Yeah, if they were aware of the hazard too, right? And appreciated it. And that's why I say that an education program is also necessary to go hand in hand with this because even if we decided today that not another corded blind will be sold, there's 140 or million households in the US, 150 million households in the US, it's gonna take a long time to cycle through all those products. But we have to start somewhere, we have to start someday. And we just made the decision that we're not gonna wait any longer. And we started March 31st because April 1st was April Fool's Day and I didn't want any confusion in the industry that we were playing a joke. And April was a tough month for us, I'll admit it. But in May, we actually had a higher revenue number than we did in May last year. So it's not 100% detrimental to any business. Yeah, you mentioned that it does put you at a competitive disadvantage, but you've been able to thrive still in a cordless environment. Absolutely. And the one category that we've been the most successful in which is honeycomb or cellular shades, we have been working with our manufacturers on making them cordless for us for years. And we have a very small surcharge for the cordless solution on those. But the reality is there are additional solutions necessary to make every window cordless accessible. Because some are hard to reach, some are behind furniture, some people are not able to reach high enough to get the window shade all the way open. And motorization is an example of a technology that will address any window, but it's gonna take more work to get the motorization cost down. That is an expensive proposition today, but it doesn't have to be. Motorization is, it's a radio. We make radio frequency products available at reasonable prices in many categories of products, including cordless phones, which nobody buys them anymore because everyone has a cell phone. But remote control for your TV, remote control for your lights, remote control for your thermostat, we remote control everything. Just watch out for those button cell batteries in there, right? Exactly. So in November of 2015, did you come to the conclusion that all corded window blinds present an unreasonable risk of injury or death? I came to the conclusion that it is not possible to determine from our side what is or is not reasonable to expect from a cordless or corded product in the home use. And the only way to be sure that the expectation is met, that the blind will be safe is to sell it without a cord. And you've got, with 95% of your sales, you've got direct ability to contact all of your, everybody who has purchased corded blinds from you. Over a million customers. Have you, what kind of information have you subsequently sent out to those customers of yours who you've made and sold to them corded blinds? We email them on a weekly basis. We have educated them as much as we can. We have implemented a go cordless initiative where we have committed to completely retrofit one home a month for any family that submits a story that is going to give us the feeling that they're the most deserving of anybody who submits their request to have us make their home all cordless. A previous customer. A previous, no, a new customer. Any new customer too. And we take this very seriously. Before we went all cordless, we offered every consumer, any consumer that wanted a cord cleat for every window in their house. We sent them out for free. But cord cleats are not the answer. Cord cleats are just earlier this year, a kid was strangled by a cord cleat blind that was properly wrapped and it didn't prevent the tragedy. Have you, have you plans to recall your corded product with CPSC through a fast track recall? No. Why not in terms of commitment? I recognize some of your language and I know it's rhetoric to be, to have the best possible impact. And let me ask you one quick question first. Did I hear you correctly when you said 19 deaths I mean months, was that purposeful or was that truly a slip? It was intentional. It was intentional, okay, I thought so. It wasn't missed on me. But you did mention that we're playing Russian roulette with children and you've sold corded product to family. You have the ability to reach them and to offer them a repair, a recall, or a refund. And I'm just curious how you can make that commitment and yet not want to offer them without charge your cordless product. Well, you know I could do that but I would be out of business pretty quickly, right? If I gave everybody free blinds. But I appreciate the comment and I do take it to heart and it is something that we've thought about and we are actually working very hard to come up with what is the right financial model where we can offer a discount to such a degree that anybody can replace their corded blind with a cordless blind. I'm not sure what the answer is yet but trying to think of a way, cut your cord, send us your cord, we'll give you a 50% discount on a cordless blind. I don't know if that will work, we have to run the models but we also have to stay in business. I recognize that. Right and we don't want to put the American consumer out of business and I think one of the things that's missed in a lot of regulatory consideration is how regressive regulation is. It disproportionately impacts low income folks in terms of price points, whether it's table saws or cordless product in terms of price point increases. And if you believe that we should mandate only cordless blinds by regulation, do you also think that we should tolerate corded blind in the marketplace or should we in fact along the same rationale recall all corded blinds in the United States? How could one tolerate corded blinds in the marketplace that present a risk if one believes that risk is there and yet at the same time justify a mandatory standard? It's been done for decades. Look at the auto industry seatbelts. We didn't recall cars. We didn't retrofit cars. They worked their way through. What about the third brake light in the window? We didn't call all the cars back in. We didn't say you had to retrofit your cars. It just happens to take time and eventually what you see on the street is a car that is meeting the standards and not seeing cars that don't meet the standards and the same thing has to happen in window blinds. Thank you. Thank you for your candor. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you to the panel. Dr. Fox-Rolling, Ms. Hitchcock, Mr. Alcorn, Mr. Silverberg, Ms. Iverson. We appreciate your testimony coming here today. Just a few other items as we wrap up. I do want to remind folks who may be paying attention online or of course who are here that we will keep the record open for one week. So for any of the information that may have been requested or any additional information that folks would like to provide the agency, please do so. I do want to acknowledge for the record we did receive additional written comments from folks who were not able to testify. I do want to mention who they are. The Iowa ATV Injury Prevention Task Force, Earth Justice and a coalition of organizations along with them, Public Citizen, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Zippo Manufacturing, the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, Outdoor Industry Association, the National Retail Federation, the Toy Industry Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council. We all did go through their testimony very closely and we're pleased to have them submit that. And finally, I do want to acknowledge our executive director and her staff for office of the secretary. Thank you Todd for the work that you did and for a facilities office and everybody for making this happen. We very much appreciate everything that goes into it. It was seamless and that is because of the staff work behind the scenes that made it all work. So thank you very much for those who attended who submitted testimony who watched online. This concludes this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.