 Good morning to all of you and thanks for coming this morning. Welcome to this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. We have one item on our agenda this morning. This is our annual public hearing on the commission's agenda and priorities for the next fiscal year. Sorry, for the next two fiscal years. I always say that CPSC's mission is aided by the input and the insight of all of our stakeholders. And I am grateful today to today's presenters as well as to those who have submitted written testimony for taking the time and the effort to share your thoughts as well as your expertise. Your input is invaluable to this commission. Presenters have been divided into four panels. Each presenter will have 10 minutes to deliver their comments. Our secretary, Ms. Alberta Mills, will keep track of the time. Thanks to Ms. Mills, Ms. Hammons, and the Office of Secretary for all of their assistance today. Presenters, I would ask you to watch the light in front of you to track your remaining time. When the yellow light comes on, it indicates that you have one minute left for your comments. In addition, the Office of the General Counsel is here to ensure we remain on track and within the boundaries of our hearing. Throughout the day, we will be joined by Ms. Patricia Hans, General Counsel, and Ms. Melissa Hampshire, Assistant General Counsel. Ms. Hans will be recused from panels one and three. Following all of the panelist presentations, commissioners will have 10 minutes for questions. Given time considerations, we will have just one round of commission questions per panel, which all of the offices have discussed ahead of time. After our second panel, around 1.05 p.m., we will break for an hour for lunch. Out of respect for all of our panelists, I want to make every effort to stay on time so everyone can meet whatever obligations they may have today. I apologize ahead of time if I have to gavel down either one of our panelists or my colleagues, but I do want to be cognizant of people's time. We will keep the record open for one week after today's hearing. If you're not getting a chance to say something you really would like to have into the record, you have an additional week to comment and add your comments or your thoughts. You are welcome to supplement whatever testimony you have provided or comment further in writing. We are happy to receive that and we'll, of course, review it. With that, we will begin with our first panel this morning, which includes Nancy Coles from Kids in Danger, Dr. Diana Zuckerberg from the National Center for Health Research. Zuckerman, I apologize. Bob is right here, he keeps me on my toes. I apologize, these are out of order, but it's Ms. Nancy Coles, Ms. Janet McGee, Dr. Diana Zuckerman, Greg Wieschtat, and Pamela Ziderich. Ziderich. Ziderich, okay. I want to thank all of you for being here, and with that, I'll ask Ms. Coles to begin. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to present comments on the agenda and priorities for the coming fiscal year. We take this opportunity very seriously and hope that you hear things today that will help you determine the course of the agency. As you know, KIT is dedicated to protecting children by fighting for product safety. Our mission is to save lives by enhancing transparency and accountability through safer product development, better education, and stronger advocacy for children. We have been presenting testimony at these hearings for many years, longer than you all have been here to hear it, so I'll reiterate some of the same issues I've raised in past years, but my key message from KIT today is to think about innovation, regulation, and transparency. Through the implementation of the CPSIA and Danny's Law, the CPSC has successfully developed strong mandatory standards for 19 types of durable infant and toddler products, leaving just six items from the original list remaining. But 2018 is the 10th anniversary of Danny's Law, meaning that a decade after passage of this landmark legislation, consumers still have no assurance that those six products, to say nothing about products that aren't covered by a standard, such as baby nests, crib hammocks, and other potentially hazardous products, not even covered by voluntary standards, are safe for their children. Please continue to prioritize this work, giving staff the time, resources, and support that they need to develop strong standards. In addition, we think that CPSC should include in Section 104 rulemaking all durable infant and toddler products. Parents should have the confidence that all nursery products, not just those that were made at the time the original law was passed, are safe with a strong standard. Despite the strong recommendation from the AAP, who you'll hear from, against using crib bumper pads, a position echoed by virtually all health and safety organizations, CPSC is working with ASTM to create a standard. The current work focuses on the firmness of the bumper, trying to make them firmer, even though we believe that might introduce additional problems, such as wedging of the baby between the bumper and the side of the crib. The amount of time and money going into designing a possible test method for these unnecessary products would be better spent joining Maryland, Ohio, the city of Chicago, and virtually every child care regulator in the country to ban the use of padded bumpers. A standard that doesn't address the risk and gives a false sense of safety to parents is more dangerous than no standard. Dany's Law also requires the use of prepaid product registration cards. We all know that direct notification is the best way to inform parents about a recall. And while the card and online site are at a minimum requirement, we believe that companies should be encouraged to innovate and add other methods, such as scanning an icon or barcode, or partnering with technology companies on different ideas. The CPSC should also research registration numbers, return ratios, and recall impact from the use of the cards and publish those findings. SaferProducts.gov. According to recent data that we got from CPSC, there have been over 35,000 reports made to SaferProducts. Information we got last year shows that an average of 800,000 visitors each year use the site. It's an invaluable resource for safety. And it's discouraging but not surprising that when we look at those numbers, the number of the reports has dropped every year since 2012. There appears to be little effort to publicize the database. Company comments on the site discourage the use of the database and instead tell consumers that they would get better results if they reported it directly to the company where it would not be made public. CPSC should prioritize using low-cost efforts to increase the database's visibility and use as presented in the 2016 report by the Consumer Federation of America and add additional types of reports to the public database that currently are not included. SaferProducts.gov was a compromise, really. What we really wanted to see was the elimination of Section 6B of the Consumer Product Safety Act that hides safety information from consumers. We still think that that's the best direction to go. Parents should not have to wait until a recall is complete before learning their child is sleeping in a deadly crib, playing with a lead-tainted toy, or riding in a stroller prone to losing a wheel. Our recent recall report where we looked at 2016 for recall effectiveness shows, well, nothing, because the data simply could not be used. Because of the overuse of Section 6B protection, many of the reports we received were basically blank. Every drop of information redacted, including already public information, such as whether they had posted on Facebook and how many products were in the original recall, which is in your repress release. The redactions are on top of other reports that have missing months or data fields. Mathematical errors are simply never filed. We urge the CPSC to require companies to comply with CPSA, including Section 6B, by not allowing it to become a blanket protection for any public accountability. A lot of work goes into announcing a recall. However, we must stop thinking that is the goal. Removing unsafe products from consumer use is the goal. Innovation is needed in recall effectiveness. From what we can gather from SPART's data, the effectiveness rate has not changed significantly since we first started working on this issue when Danny died in 1998, despite mind-boggling changes in communication channels and tracking possibilities. The burden falls on consumers. Listen to the news. Fill out forms. Wait for and install repairs. But consumers are not the one responsible for recalled products. This imbalance of burden and responsibility should be corrected. We were very pleased to see the recent release of recall effectiveness numbers from the monthly reports for a very limited number of recalls from the beginning of this year and equally disappointed to see it disappear this week. Hopefully that's not permanent. We know it took a lot of time and perseverance to get us to this point, and I believe it's going to be very useful going forward in measuring and improving recalls. We look forward to following the development of this data set. We also applaud CPSC Action to begin the mandatory recall process on the Britax Bob branded strollers that have been involved in dozens of injuries. This is one of the tools in CPSC's arsenal to protect consumers that is used too rarely. While it might not lead to a recall as quickly as we might like, it does give consumers information now that they can use to protect their families. In terms of safe sleep, which I know I talk about every year, I just want to add that I think we are seeing a lot of products still come on the market that are unsafe. And so in addition to standards works, I think CPSC needs to make it a priority within the Small Business Ombudsman's Office to provide outreach and product safety information to the companies that are entering these products into the market. You'll hear more about furniture shortly, but I just want to, you know, briefly say what we think CPSC should focus on in the next two years when it comes to furniture tip-overs. We want to see continued CPSC participation in leadership in the ASTM committee to push for a stronger standard, including an increase of testing weight to 60 pounds and a testing surface to mimic the carpeting in most bedrooms. We want to see recalls of products that do not meet the ASTM standards. There's absolutely no reason they should still be in the marketplace. Strong education messages for furniture that's already in home to be anchored and with that an evaluation of the Anchor It campaign to see if we can measure changes in behavior and use the methods that work the best for that in going forward with education. And then to work with IKEA and other recalling companies to make their recalls more effective so we actually get products removed from homes. To recap, innovation. New ideas and methods to reach consumers with safety news including recalls and public education campaigns such as Anchor It, along with using technology to track recalls and help companies better prepare for future ones. Regulation. CPSC is charged with regulating product manufacturers. This means acting to recall products that don't mean standards such as furniture that doesn't meet the minimal standard. It means following up on reporting requirements and not letting poor efforts by recalling companies just slide. It means using every tool in the toolbox to assure safe products from stiff civil penalties to filing suit to force a needed recall reporting and compliance. And finally transparency. CPSC is a public agency. Small steps such as the posting of some recall effectiveness data were encouraging but the practice of the consumer always being the last to know they have a dangerous product in their home must end. Using saferproducts.gov more effectively, increasing the recall information available and finding new ways to communicate should be a priority. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miss Mickey. The first child to die from an Ikea dresser was recorded in 1989. By 2014, there were six documented children's deaths from Ikea dressers. Some of these were quietly settled with families with no publicity. The last two of these six children to die were killed by the Ikea mom dresser in 2014. By 2015, these two families were pursuing litigation against Ikea and in July of 2015 in response to those deaths, Ikea decided to issue a repair kit program where if a consumer requested it, they would send out anchor kits for free to consumers. Advocate groups warned Ikea that it wasn't enough. The attorney of these two families appeared on national news in early 2016 saying it wasn't good enough and another child was going to die if they didn't recall these dressers off the market. My husband Jeremy and I had no idea of any of this. On February 14th, 2016, our precious son Ted, who was just 22 months old, died when the Ikea mom dresser fell on him. We had never heard of this repair kit program. In fact, we initially thought Ted's death was a freak accident because we had never even heard of a tip-over accident before. Four days after he died, while sitting on the floor in my dead son's bedroom, I googled Ikea dresser deaths on my phone. A friend of mine had heard something about Ikea dressers being unstable and it prompted my search. My heart sank when the first thing that appeared was Ted's mom dresser, as well as a flood of news stories about the other two precious boys, Karen Collis and Camden Ellis, who had died from the same mom dresser line in 2014. I was completely devastated to learn this. At that time in my life, I watched the news almost every morning. I was busy raising my family, had attained a master's degree, and was working a corporate job at a Fortune 500 company. I represented many mothers. I would rate myself as moderate with keeping up with current events. And I had no idea that children were dying from unstable furniture or that the risk this unstable dresser posed to my child. Two days after Ted's funeral, I called the attorney representing these two families the same man who had appeared on national news just weeks before, predicting that another death was going to happen. And I learned that day that Ted's mom dresser did not meet safety standards and it didn't have to because the standards for making furniture are voluntary. And that companies do not legally have to comply with these standards in order to sell furniture in the United States. I was appalled. At this point, Ted was the seventh child to die from an Ikea dresser and it didn't appear that the company was doing much about it other than saying something along the lines of, sorry for your loss, you really should have anchored your furniture. We were learning so much information about this in a very short period of time. We were overwhelmed with Ted's death, which was just a couple weeks prior at this point and sickened at the thought that this could happen to another child. My husband and I felt it was necessary to press this company to finally do something about this. We didn't know much about this process. We were told it might take years. We were told we would face judgment from other people surrounding a tip over death as many families had experienced before us. But none of this mattered to us because all we could think is that Ted's death might not be the last one from a tip over. In June of 2016, four months after Ted's death, Ikea, facing pressure, voluntarily recalled 29 million dressers because they did not meet safety standards. We were related to know that Ted's dresser was finally off the market. In the fall of 2016, we learned that yet another child had died from the mom dresser back in 2011, but the family hadn't reported it publicly. This was completely understandable given the immense pain the death of a child brings to a family. But learning this meant that Ted was actually the eighth child to die in 27 years from an Ikea dresser. In December of 2016, Ikea settled with our three families among several stipulations of the settlement, our families were awarded $50 million and the company agreed to never sell dressers that didn't meet standards again. Why did it take this to get a company to comply with standards? Because they're voluntary. As 2017 rolled around, advocates warned Ikea they weren't doing enough to promote their recall. By the one-year mark, there were an estimated 28 million of the 29 million recalled dressers still unaccounted for. And it was confusing that Ikea was selling the new furniture that met safety standards under the same name as the dressers that didn't meet the standards. Advocates were scared another child would die. And in May of 2017, it happened, an innocent boy in California died when the Ikea mom dresser fell on him almost a year after the recall. His family hadn't heard of the recall. We now know of nine children who have died from Ikea dressers. Are there more? Possibly. I want to be very clear today that this is an industry-wide problem. My story involves just one company, but it represents what's happening in the market today because standards are not mandatory and we aren't moving fast enough to address this problem. My son's death is a live example of what happens when we wait to address an apparent issue. So I sit here in 2018 wondering when enough is enough. Wondering when the next family is going to live through the hell and the heartbreak that my family has experienced. Who is the next innocent child to lose their life? And why are we okay with selling unstable dressers to consumers and instructing them to finish making it safe by anchoring it to a wall? Why can't we require all furniture makers to design and sell safe, stable dressers so that consumers are safe from the moment they purchase the item? We know that it's possible because some furniture makers are doing it today. So today I asked the CPSC to acknowledge that the time is now to address this issue. I urge you to not wait any longer. We do not need to wait for another child to die. Please get this on the priority list for fiscal year 2019 and 2020. I encourage the CPSC to use the new data released in March of 2018 from Consumer Reports, along with the Furniture Stability Report released in August of 2016 from Kids in Danger and Chains Foundation to first strengthen the current furniture making standards to 60 pounds. This takes into consideration heavier children, the real-world scenario of clothing and all dressers, and dressers being used in carpeted bedrooms. Second, make the voluntary standards for furniture making mandatory. And third, recall all the dressers on the market today that do not meet today's voluntary standards and call on companies and the industry as a whole to widely publicize their recalls with the same vigor and tenacity they used in selling the dressers to consumers in the first place. Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to share my story today and have a voice in how the upcoming year fiscal dollars will be spent. Thank you very much, Ms. McGee. Dr. Zuckerman. Thank you, Janet. It's hard to talk after that because the issues that she's raised are really very similar to the kinds of issues that I'm going to be raising, but from a very different perspective. But as a mother, it's very hard to listen to. I'm Dr. Diana Zuckerman. I'm president of the National Center for Health Research and our center is a nonprofit think tank that conducts research, scrutinizes research done by others, tries to make sense of the meaning of the research, looks at contradictions in research, and tries to use that information to improve programs, policies, and services, and products in this country. So our mission overlaps in a strong way with what the Consumer Product Safety Commission does, and we care very much about the work that you do and depend on you. But when we're looking at research, it's sometimes a lot more difficult because there's so little of it for so many of the products that we're looking at. Today, I'm going to talk about different kinds of risks than most other speakers, I think. I'm going to be talking about the ones we can't see. And that's what my priorities are going to focus on, not because others aren't important, but because as a scientist, I think that a unique perspective that I bring. I'm trained in epidemiology at Yale Medical School. I was on the faculty at Yale and Vassar and a researcher at Harvard before coming to Washington as an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow. And I've been here for the 30 years ever since. So I'm going to try to give the big picture, and it's hard to do, but I want to talk about the fact that we are surrounded by chemicals we can't see. This is not something that we like to think about, but as an epidemiologist, that's how I think. And I know that in the dust that we're breathing today, when I touch this table, we are exposing ourselves to chemicals, some of which are safer than others. And we're basically in a chemical soup, and because we're exposed to so many chemicals, from so many sources, it's hard to distinguish which ones are the worst ones, which are the ones we should regulate more carefully. So I'm going to focus on three issues. We know that these chemicals have risks, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that, but what we don't know very much about is how much risk. And I know that's an issue that's been raised in a previous meeting, so I want to try to address that a little bit. And how essential your role is, and how essential it has been. So the three kinds of priorities I'm going to be talking about are, again, organohalagen flame retardants. I want to say how pleased we are that you're moving ahead with that, want to urge you to have a chap convened as soon as possible. These are chemicals that are particularly of concern because they just don't disappear. They last forever. If they're here in this room, they stay in this room. If they're on our skin, we can wash our hands, but they're going to just come back. So even though we don't know exactly what the risks are, we know how difficult it is to get rid of those risks. So I think a chap is the clear way to do it. I think chaps have been very effective in the past, and I really urge you to move forward on that as soon as you can. I want to spend a little bit more time talking about artificial turf. This is an issue that has really gone under the radar for a lot of families and a lot of legislators. The State of Maryland did have a bill introduced this year to stop using state money to install artificial turf fields. The DC government currently has a one-year moratorium on the use of any DC funds for particular kinds of artificial turf fields, ones made with crumb rubber. One of the issues with artificial turf fields, and I want to say I'm talking about the fields that used to be called astroturf fields, the artificial grass, but also the playgrounds that little children play on that are very pretty and very colorful and they feel kind of spongy and you think these seem so great, but these are all of these are made with chemicals from petroleum that have certain risks that we know about. We don't know exactly what the risks are for each individual child, but think of this, you know, whether it's your child playing or child or grandchild playing soccer or practicing every day on these fields or on these playgrounds for an hour recess every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year these exposures are constant. So we know that they do include chemicals that can disrupt hormones and hormone disrupting chemicals can cause or exacerbate obesity, attention deficit disorder, early puberty, and by early puberty I'm talking about children as young as eight and nine starting puberty. I mean these are children at an age they're still learning how to make change for a dollar and they're having hormonal episodes that we usually think of as for teenagers, but young children are having these feelings and confusion from hormone disruption and also that they eventually can cause cancer. So these are extremely important exposures and these kind of chemicals are ubiquitous in our environment and we really need to have a better handle on them. One of the most frightening things about artificial turf to me is how little information is available about what's in them. A lot of that information is considered trade secret. You can't find it anywhere. There's no federal agency that has required studies of these chemicals prior to their use and so every time independent researchers such as ones at Yale Medical School do research and find problems with particular kinds of artificial turf or crumb rubber or whatever it is, the companies come up with new products that we don't know about. So for that reason I really, I know that the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA has been concerned about artificial turf and concerned about playgrounds and I'm really asking that you move forward on this because millions and millions of dollars are being spent in each community just on these fields and parents really have no clue that these are risks. Also just want to mention they get very, very hot in the summer and so I've taken temperatures of fields around here and playgrounds where on a nice fall day where it's in the 60s it's actually 140 degrees or warmer on these fields and on a sunny hot day it can go well over 160 degrees. The last thing I'm just going to mention are phthalates which I think that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has done a terrific job. The legislation was passed that our center was actually instrumental on years ago to restrict certain phthalates in toys and products for children under three and the chap that you all put together has been terrific but I just want to say those are not the only exposures to phthalates. It isn't just toys and it isn't just those products specifically for children under three. Kids are being exposed to a lot of other products that have phthalates and the prenatal exposure is of particular concern because there's no restrictions on that. So in summary I just want to say how much we depend on the work that you're doing and admire and respect it and ask that we know that you're small and you have limited resources but there are these risks that don't seem as immediate because we can't see them but we're being exposed to them every day. Our children and grandchildren are and I really ask you to do whatever you can to move those up on the priority list. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Mr. Wishtat. Acting Chair Berkel, commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. My name is Greg Wishtat. I serve as president of Portable Generator Manufacturers Association. PGMA is a voluntary trade organization which began in 2009 and includes major manufacturers of portable generators representing a majority of market share. PGMA and its members are dedicated to the safe use of power portable generators. As such, PGMA has developed and maintains the ANSI standard for portable generators known as ANSI PGMA G300. Since this standard first achieved consensus and recognition in 2015, PGMA and its members have been working towards an update to the standard to address the carbon monoxide, CO, hazard posed by misuse of portable generators. This is a voluntary standard that our members are committed to follow. Many of our member products are compliant with this voluntary standard today. Since last March's hearing on potential rulemaking activities at CPSC, our members have made significant progress towards the update of G300. These include investing tens of thousands of hours in the development and testing and verification of requirements contained within the standard, forming a steering committee comprised of independent stakeholders to provide input and feedback throughout the standard development process, holding four technical summits where the current draft of the new standard requirements, member data and analysis was shared in order to get valuable feedback on the revision, facilitating the visit of CPSC commissioners and staff at several of the PGMA members' facilities in Wisconsin last year where they were able to get a firsthand look at the work that was being done to develop the solution. The feedback indicated that the commission was very impressed with the work that had been accomplished. In fact, it was further indicated that the staff felt that detection and shutoff was the appropriate approach to the hazard. It just wasn't ready for review at the time CPSC staff initially studied this approach. Working together to replicate the efforts that CPSC staff and NIST undertook in the NPRM to estimate the impact to fatalities avoided through extensive analysis using the CONTAM tool, this tool has now been formalized in a technical report provided to you today. This report has also been validated by an independent engineering firm exponent and lastly providing a comprehensive set of requirements to address all aspects of the hazard. At CPSC staff's request, the standard includes a robust set of requirements for tamper resistance, reliability and operation over a broad range of environmental extremes that will ensure the safety systems on compliant generators will continue to operate for the life of the generator. Additionally, it includes requirements for post shutdown notification and instruction to the user. I'm pleased to share with you today that the latest revision of the PGMA G300 standard, 2018, which now includes requirements for an automatic carbon monoxide detection and shutoff, has achieved overwhelming consensus of more than 90% acceptance amongst the diverse canvas group. This includes CPSC staff who also voted in favor of the revision. It is now in the final stages of ANSI recognition. Many of the PGMA members are already working towards compliance with the standard today. The standard includes an effective date of March 31, 2020, meaning that all G300 compliant generators produced after March 31, 2020 must meet the requirements for the CO safety shutoff system. Additionally, the new standard would address 99% of the carbon monoxide-related fatalities resulting from misuse of portable generators where carbon monoxide can accumulate. For comparison purposes, the emissions reductions required in the present NPRM were estimated to be only 42% effective at the avoidance of these fatalities. The PGMA G300 safety standard for portable generators provides the assurance of safety while at the same time avoiding undesirable effects such as significant price increases making generators less accessible to those who need them in times of emergency, fire hazards resulting from increased exhaust temperatures, or not being easily applicable to all types of portable generators. As a whole, CPSC has amassed an enormous amount of work to progress the portable generator safety efforts to its present state. PGMA and its members are very appreciative of this effort as it was invaluable to help us in the revisions to the voluntary standard. Our progress in such a short time would not have been possible without the efforts of CPSC. This process should be viewed by all as a success where industry and government work together towards the best solution. Given that the voluntary standard has proven to be effective, adopted by the Canvas Group, and compliance has been demonstrated, we feel that it is no longer necessary for CPSC to continue with mandatory rulemaking. We request that CPSC terminate the proposed rule and allow the voluntary standard to achieve its goals. Further, we request that CPSC redirect the resources and efforts that would have been expended to complete the portable generator rule towards the improvement of the incident tracking surveillance systems which allow for the tracking of hazards such as carbon monoxide poisoning from the misuse of portable generators. Today, these systems do not allow for simple determination such as does a generator that is implicated in a CO poisoning incident contain the carbon monoxide safety label that was mandated by CPSC rule in 2007. Improving the data that is used by CPSC to track incidents associated with all consumer products will make it much easier to identify the hazard patterns and create solutions for them. In particular, for portable generators, this data will be invaluable to evaluate the effectiveness of G300. It would also provide valuable data for PGMA and its members to use when making future revisions to ANSI PGMA G300 to further improve the safety of portable generators. Resources could also be expended on our public outreach campaign entitled Take It Outside. We would like to thank CPSC staff and their efforts throughout the rulemaking process. The work completed by CPSC and NIST has been extremely beneficial for our members to complete the work on the voluntary standard. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you very much. Ms. Zidarec. Thank you. Mr. Rich. Sorry. Thanks to Chairman Burkle and this board for the opportunity to come before this commission to bring awareness for our battle for the truth. My name is Pamela Zidarec and I'm the co-founder and vice president of a nonprofit organization Midway Defective Window Recipients. I'm a lifelong resident of Chicago, Illinois, and for the record, I love my city. The Midway Defective Window Recipients nonprofit was codified in August of 2017 to assist with advocating on behalf of the community for the grave concern that has fallen on the tens of thousands of residents surrounding both the Chicago Midway and O'Hare international airports in Chicago, Illinois. We are in need of your help, guidance, direction, regulatory guidelines, testing procedures, and rulemaking. The problem at hand is in regard to the defective and harmful PVC window and door products that were installed in the homes near both airports in an effort to reduce the impact of aircraft noise. The program that sponsors this sound-insulating environmental program is a residential sound installation program by and through the Chicago Department of Aviation. The PVC window and door products were ultimately found to be defective by and through homeowners that discovered the smell of a harmful off-gassing stench of burning plastic from the PVC when exposed to direct sunlight. I got my windows in 2011 but didn't begin to smell the smell until late summer 2016. It took me until March of 2017 to discover that the source of the smell was my RSIP windows. This concerning issue was brought to the attention of the CDA and their personnel dating back to as early as spring of 2015 but not acknowledged as an alarming and dangerous issue until April 2017. I want to be clear to all that the mechanism that starts these windows smelling is the sun. It is not the heat. It can be 105 and high humidity and cloudy and the windows will not off-gas. But if it's sunny and minus 10, my windows will off-gas. Think of it this way, you could be in a hot room and be hot but you must be in the sun to get a sunburn. And like a faucet, the sun makes the off-gassing turn on and off. Since my first call to the RSIP office to present day, the CDA and its agents have undertaken a campaign of lies, misinformation, fraud, dissuasion, and attrition tactics just to name a few. What are they trying to hide and why? This behavior has raised several serious questions about the CDA's handling of this program and the $550 million they managed. Questionable and concerning behavior from their procurement practices, engagement with the corrupt, embezzling business owner long after the CDA was aware of same, and so on, specifics which are outlined in detail in our submission. The ultimate result of which was the bankruptcy of sound solutions and windows and doors who made a good portion of these windows, leaving thousands of residents without a warranty when this problem first came to the CDA's attention in 2015, sound solutions went out of business in 2014. In 2015, the CDA admits to replacing three whole houses of windows for this issue. One of these homes, now one full block from mine and with the same install year as mine, 2011, was visited and inspected by the same gentleman that stood in my kitchen in May of 2017 and lied right to my face and told me if my windows were replaced for this problem, I'd be the first. The CDA treated this as an anomaly, but think, windows that smell so bad it warrants a complete ripout and reinstallation, how did that get justified internally? No non-conformance, no engineering evaluation, no corrective action, it's nonsense. So I started small and on social media. I approached my neighbors in as much of the community I could any way I could. Word spread, local press and media got involved, neighbors got involved, our wonderful Alderman Marty Quinn got involved and other politicians came on board. We've had some progress on this issue, but we are at an impasse and that is why we are seeking your help. To date, hundreds of screenings have been confirmed with these windows. As of March 27, 2018, a total of 839 homes have been screened, a smell test, and 448 have been confirmed, that's over a 53% confirmation rate. The FAA, who provides 80% of the funds for this program, who's been silent, recently recognized this problem on a March 2, 2018 letter to our organization that stated Washington headquarters confirmed this is an unprecedented situation. We still have very difficult issues to overcome, there are still over 16,000 addresses that have not been given proper notification by the CDA. Amic Foster Wheeler, the firm hired by the city of Chicago, testified under oath that they've never even done this type of testing. We have many questions and issues with the chamber testing that was performed, seeing that this was the benchmark test for isolating what VOCs, volatile organic chemicals, they would look for when performing their in-home testing. Without the impact of UV on these windows in chamber, they basically shut the windows off. They put them in a dark chamber. They did not mimic the proper conditions. We also have questions of chain of custody the windows used in the chamber. Timing of in-home testing was definitely not ideal. Late October, beginning of November, all of which resulted in inconclusive results with no root cause. But based on incomplete and inconclusive test results, the CDA issued a press release in January and did a homeowner mailing stating, Chicago Department of Aviation announces initial window testing finds no evidence of health impact. I find this premature, negligent, misleading and purposeful. They admit they have no idea what the root causes, but they can declare a scientific conclusion. They also state there's no impact on indoor air quality, which I can tell you is utter nonsense. On sunny, beautiful days, it fills homeowners with fear. Now we have a third manufacturer, Harvey's Harvey Windows, added to the list. Harvey is a current supplier to this program and has been confirmed with off-gassing windows, which completely changes the theory of only bad sound solution windows. The CDA claims the smell from Harvey Windows is not the same as the smell from the sound solution windows. I personally put my nose on the windows of three separate homes with Harvey Windows and there is no difference between what is coming off my sound solution windows than what is coming off the Harvey Windows. And I have been plagued with the smell for two years now. I know the smell very well. It's burning plastic. Homeowners advise us that they're suffering with a long list of health issues, such as coughing, headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, nasal, eye and throat irritation, upper respiratory infections, chronic sinus infections, difficulty breathing, asthma, which in some pediatric cases is extreme, bronchitis, fatigue and so on. Unless proper testing is undertaken and the root cause is identified, we as a whole will never know for sure about long-term health issues. We owe it to our loved ones, our community, past and future residents of these buildings, but especially to our children, the true and exact scientifically proven information as to exactly what we are being exposed to. In addition, there have been several reports and I have personally witnessed catastrophic mechanical failures, which could result in significant injury or death. Is it possible that the mechanical failures of the hidden medical components are tied to the off-gassing? Considering that when PVC burns, it produces hydrogen chloride, also known as hydrochloric acid. This in turn breaks down the metal components in these windows. Something to consider, my front east-facing windows were noticeably off-gassing last year. Thankfully, we have a large 74-year-old silver maple in front of our yard, which has protected this side of our home until now. Just the other morning while having breakfast around 8 a.m., I began to smell the smell coming off these particular windows. Due to recent sewer work, several branches have been cut off my tree and I have no idea what the new outcome will be for these east-facing windows. There seems to be an exposure tipping point. Exactly what that is, I cannot say for certain, but I'm confident if a proper scientific study was done and overseen by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, that could be determined along with the root cause and our toxic exposure. Think of it, it compares to the Chinese drywall matter or the lumber liquidators vinyl flooring issues. I think our issue qualifies for precedent distinction, because we cannot easily throw these windows out like a lead-laden piece of cheap jewelry. We cannot drag them to the curb. The deed is done. These windows are an integral structure to our homes. Take the water poisoning case in Flint, Michigan, for instance. There was so much misinformation fed to the homeowners, rig-testing practices, attempts to appease at first and in turn a demand that waivers be signed and absolving anyone of wrongdoing, etc. What has taken place in Chicago so far mirrors the Flint case. It was not until higher governing agencies stepped in to help their community that the truth was finally uncovered. Criminal charges were filed against state officials in that case. We respectfully request and urgently plea for help from the Consumer Product Safety Commission in any capacity. There is no precedent regarding this matter. I cannot stress enough how complicated and serious this issue is. I believe our written submission clearly supports our contention that the CDA is not to be trusted with this investigation. It clearly supports our need for Consumer Product Safety Commission oversight for further investigation of the CDA and proper testing of our windows and air quality in our homes. Therefore, I, Pamela Zdarich, Vice President of Midway Defective Window Recipients, ask you to please help. Thank you very much. We will now turn to the Commission for questions. We will each have 10-minute rounds, and I will begin the questioning. Before I begin my questions again, I want to thank all of you for being here today. In particular, Ms. McGee, one of the most profound things I have seen in my five years here at the Commission has been the courage and the willingness of parents who had suffered an unspeakable loss, the loss of a child to come forward with their ideas, with their concerns, and with their advice to us. And so I know I speak for my colleagues, and I'm sure they will speak for themselves. But I want to thank you for your courage and your willingness to come here today and testify on behalf of your son, Ted. I truly appreciate it. And as a mother of six and 17 grandkids, it's an unspeakable tragedy, and I thank you. Ms. Coles, I wanted to talk about safe sleep. You mentioned the 104s and safe sleep. There are various messages out there about safe sleep. And, you know, there's safe sleep, bear is best, all kinds of messaging. How can we better provide consistent messaging about that issue? And is there a way that CPSC can partner with KID or with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which I'll ask that question later as well, to have a consistent message so that the consumer is not confused? Yes, thank you for that question. Obviously, safe sleep is so important to our organization and really to parents everywhere. And it is a difficult message for us, for others, and I often point to it because it's in some ways what's best for baby, which is bear is best, on their back, in a safe crib with nothing else in the crib, seems counter-intuitive to new parents. And so it is an uphill battle. For instance, talking about bicycle helmets, everyone can immediately see why a bicycle helmet would protect your child and it makes sense. So I think it is a difficult message and I think there are also many parts to it. The American Academy of Pediatrics has the best statement in terms of all the things that go into preventing sids or suede unexpected sleep deaths or suffocation. And I would, you know, I'm not sure we can boil it down to one phrase, CPSC has been using bear is best, which is when you talk about the product itself, which is your area of concern, is certainly the best advice to always put a baby in a bear crib. On their backs is the second part of it. Many groups use the ABCs alone on their back in a safe crib. And so I think that works. But I think that those messages, any attempt to soften that message, and you know, I mean, this is why I constantly point to the use of crib bumpers pads is confusing that message because you can't say bear is best and then say, but bumpers are okay because that's not bear. So I think a clear message and then, you know, supporting the products that support the message is the way to go. And we are always more than happy to work with you, with AP, with anyone on this issue. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Dr. Zuckerman, I'd like to just talk to you a little bit. Your testimony asks the CPSC to expand our work on phthalates and to include other household products. Can you be specific about the types of products you're referring to? And at the same time, you mentioned these large gaps in research about the danger of these products. Can you provide us more detail about those gaps you're identifying? Sure. Thank you for that question. I know that other products that you've considered, as I recall, are things like rubber boots and raincoats and boots. Kids aren't necessarily chewing them the way they chew teething toys, but sometimes they do chew them. And they are around and those chemicals are getting into the air because they're in our homes. And so, you know, I think there are a lot of products like that. You know, one of the challenges I think of this is the prenatal exposure challenge because if you're concerned about prenatal exposure, then you have to be concerned about all products, not just products for children. It is true that research showed that certainly prior to the restrictions on certain phthalates, there were a lot more phthalates in the dust of children's, of infant bedrooms than there were in other rooms in the house. So, you know, we know that getting those products out of infant bedrooms and children's bedrooms is important, but there's still going to be exposure in the rest of the house. I know one product that concerns me, I haven't seen research on this, frankly, are the plug-in products that smell very nice because those are phthalates. And we are putting them in an entire room and, you know, what better room to put them in than a child's room right near the dirty diapers are. So, you know, there's a lot of concern that our desire for a better-smelling child's room or home, you know, could be contributing to these chemicals. So I'm happy to get back to you with more details. But, you know, I think one of the big issues that's hard for you all and for all of us is where do you draw the line? Because if you want to reduce exposures prenatally, then it's really hard to draw the line. Otherwise, we could say, well, how about all products for children under three or all products for kids under five? But if we care about prenatal exposure, we have to care about other things as well. Thank you very much. Mr. Wishtat, I want to begin by commending PGMA for all of the work and the advances you've made in the shut-off technology and your willingness to host commissioners as well as staff in sharing all that you have done and the research that's been done and the work that's been done. I am very interested in what you mentioned this morning here about the effective rate of the shut-off technology being at 99% versus what our NPR was at 48%. Can you speak a little bit more about that and those findings? And I understand you're going to release the report. Yes, thank you very much, Chairman, and thank you for the kind words of the efforts that PGMA has undertaken. Our members have completed a similar analysis to what CPSC staff did in the NPRM using the CONTAM tools that NIST has developed in order to model a shut-off mechanism as opposed to an emissions reduction and then incorporating this across a varied range of emissions. The results of that analysis are where we have indicated that there's a 99% effectivity rate of fatality avoidance, and that's for indoor spaces, which as we define it as any space where carbon monoxide can accumulate, which can be seen in the modeling. So that could be in your basement in the home where we've seen some people attempt to operate these machines, or it could be in a car park where the environment is partially open and exposed, but yet there's enough of a closed-off environment there that the carbon monoxide from the generator continues to accumulate. We basically followed the same roadmap that CPSC staff used, and recently we've been presenting these results throughout the course of the last year as they've been unfolding, but now that that activity is completed amongst our members, we wrote it up into an official sort of technical report, which we have subsequently contracted an engineering firm at the request of many on our steering committee to have our results third-party validated. To go through and we gave them an open book, we submitted all of our data, which is gigabytes and gigabytes of simulation runs, gave them open access to all of our members in order to replicate some of the work we've done and validate our results, and they have since done that, and that report has now been published, and I believe we sent it to yourself and all the other commissioners here just within the last couple of days. Thank you very much. You mentioned that the shut-off technology avoids some fire hazards resulting from the increase in exhaust temperatures. Is this a hazard that can arise in the low-CO generators and low-emission technology? Can you just talk a little bit about that? Yes, thank you. First of all, let me say the shut-off technology is an independent system that sits alongside the generator and doesn't inhibit any of the other operations of the generator or force you to change the generator's operation in any way. By contrast, if you are targeting in a reduction of emissions from the generator, the strategy, the technical solution for that is essentially to take machines that currently run rich or fuel rich to a lean environment, which is where in the combustion process less carbon monoxide is produced. As a result of running them lean and as a result of adding catalysts to the system, the exhaust temperatures can rise by as much as 300 degrees Fahrenheit on a typical engine generator. We have concerns that this type of an approach could result in additional fire hazards from portable generators that are used too close to combustibles, burn hazards, fuel spillage on hot components and exhaust systems. Catalysts require this heat to effectively operate and take away the noxious chemicals coming out of the exhaust. Thank you. As my time winds down, I have one last request. I don't mean to sound ungrateful at all because you've made tremendous strides, but if there is a way that you could move that effective date up sooner, I think that that would really be... I can't express to you how much appreciated that would be because CO deaths continue to happen and this shutoff technology can prevent those deaths. Thank you very much for all of you for being here. Commissioner Adler. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I want to echo the Chairman's thanks to all of you for showing up to testify and Ms. McGee, particularly as a parent, I know how much strength and courage it takes to come and tell your story and I can only tell you that it's one that we eagerly await and one that we take to heart and I actually did want to ask a question or two about that. I saw that in your testimony, you rated yourself as a moderate in following current events. Trust me, given your educational background, that probably puts you in the top 5%. I'm always struck by these studies that ask people whether the Sun revolves around the Earth or the Earth revolves around the Sun and 25% of people think the Sun revolves around the Earth and only 20% can name who their... can even tell us how many senators there are or name their senators. So you are what I would call an extremely well-educated parent and that's the point that I wanted to raise. You are a well-educated parent yet you had no idea that children were dying from unanchored furniture. To me, this suggests that while education is important and I think we all agree that it's important, it can't be relied on exclusively to protect the public. So I guess my question is, how realistic would it be for us to expect that you or any other parent would be able to follow all of the hazards that apply to their children? I think as a parent you do the best that you can and we child-proofed our whole house. We had our cabinets locked, we had a safety gate up, I had his cord blind out of reach. I thought that I was doing everything that I had to to keep him safe and so there are so many things to think about as a parent with keeping your child safe and I feel that a piece of furniture falling on my child shouldn't need to be one of them when we could build safety into the design. I also want to point something out and that is with respect to the lawsuit that you brought and I think this is often a point that is lost on our friends in industry that even if there's not a mandatory standard and even if there's only a voluntary standard very often courts will treat failure to comply with a voluntary standard which results in an injury or death to a child that can be considered negligence per se. But I also noticed that you acted my term as a private attorney general in insisting that the company agree never to produce or sell products that failed a standard and I'm curious how did this provision get into the settlement? Was that something your attorney insisted on? Was that something the parents insisted on or was it both? I would say both but that was definitely something my husband and I had in mind when we did this lawsuit this was not about money this was not about anything aside from getting this product off the shelf and getting this company to be held accountable. Again, thank you so much for appearing here and for your pursuit of justice in your lawsuit. Dr. Zuckerman welcome again it's nice to see you. You point out that nearly everybody today has what we call OFRs the organohalagen flame retardants and measurable levels in their bodies. So I'm just curious if we went back a hundred years would not know but would you estimate that OFRs would be present or even if we went back 50 years would they be present in pretty much everybody? Well I certainly don't think so I mean but there's no data but you know so many of these chemicals are new and Nancy talked about innovation and we think of innovation as a very positive thing but in chemicals not so much so that there are so many new chemicals being introduced every year and have been introduced over the last few decades that we're going to only find out you know 10 years from now the example I always like to give is that we you know everybody agrees that smoking causes lung cancer but people start smoking in their teens and they get lung cancer in their 40s and 50s and 60s so it often takes even for something that is a very well known well established carcinogen it can still take 40 years for it to show up and so that's the concern with all of these whether it's the organohalagens or these other chemicals that it's the chemicals themselves it's the combination of all of them that we're going to find out at some point what the impact is and we don't know now I'd like to repeat a question that I asked during our hearing on organohalagens and that is we don't have complete information about all organohalagens but I am curious have you run across an organohalagen that you believe has been given a safe bill of health that doesn't present the hazard sometimes we don't know one way or the other but where we do know have we found an organohalagen that we would call safe I think it might be possible to find one but we have not found one I did also want to ask you about your crumb rubber concerns and I think we all know and I think the industry acknowledges that there's some really nasty chemicals in crumb rubber but what the industry folks have said to us when they've come in to talk to us is that they're so strongly bonded to one another that there's no off-gassing to speak of even on these very very hot conditions it seems counterintuitive but I'm curious do you know of any studies that give us information one way or the other about that well I'll say two things one is for those of you who have had have children and especially let me just say teenage boys who aren't going to tell you what's going on when they're practicing soccer I only found out last year my son is now 27 that when he used to play soccer on an artificial turf field on a hot day it stunk it smelled really bad and he could see the heat and the chemicals rising and he knew he was breathing them in but he just, you know, he's a smart kid didn't think anything of it certainly never mentioned it to me so, you know, we know that these chemicals I mean you can see and smell them so what's the chances that they're so, you know, strongly bonded that they're not off-gassing it doesn't make any sense and I give guest lectures at universities in the area and the same thing when I mention this you know somebody in the classroom is going to say oh yeah when we play, you know it smells bad on a hot day so, yeah the other thing I just want to say briefly is that having testified in DC at the DC council and also at the state of Maryland legislation house of delegates there's always experts talking about how safe these products are and they I don't know how else to say this nicely they make up stuff I mean they say that, you know, that research has been done and research proves it's safe I've heard them say that Consumer Product Safety Commission says they're perfectly safe I've heard them say EPA says they're perfectly safe they're saying things that aren't true and but most people listening don't know they're not true thank you, Mr. Wieschtat again I want to thank you for the courtesy you and other manufacturers showed in giving us a tour in Wisconsin of the facilities that are producing the gas generators I did want to voice one word of caution though you said that CPSC staff feels that detection and shut off is the appropriate approach to the hazard and I think that's a bit of an overstatement of where the staff is I think when I've talked to staff they've said we like the direction you're moving in we like the direction that UL is moving in and it's a major technical challenge for us to try to determine which is the better approach and the staff really is immersed in assessing both of them but I wouldn't want people to gain the impression that staff has blessed the PGMA standard versus the UL standard they've actually blessed both and I just wanted to raise that as a concern if you have any response please feel free yeah please thank you the quote I was referring to was a comment that came back from several other members who when staff visited and some of the commissioners as well to our companies it was expressed that the original belief of staff was that a detection and shut off methodology would be the most appropriate solution to the problem and they felt that in the beginning however it being more than 10 years since it was really studied by staff the advancements in that technology have now made it possible where then they would have seen significant challenges that would have needed to be overcome in that case thank you very much Mr. Darich I hear the problem that you're having in Chicago and I was curious are you aware of this problem existing at other airports around the country is this something your groups heard about to date no and the CDA claims that but we are still on the hunt for sure thank you all very much my time has expired thank you Commissioner Adler, Commissioner Robinson thank you all again for all of the issues that you've raised for us and I really appreciate it I fully intend to explore the issue of the very dangerous millions of dangerous dressers that are in people's homes in the hidden hazard Ms. McGee with another panel but I just wanted to thank you I've lost an immediate family member and I've represented parents like you who have lost children due to somebody else's negligence and I know what it took to come here today and I know the motivation of somebody else's kid and we just really appreciate you coming here Dr. Zacherman I want to thank you so much for all of your efforts in helping out the CPSC with respect to issues concerning dangerous chemicals I know we voted seven months ago to send the issue of organohalogens to a panel at NAS I am extremely frustrated at how slowly everything is moving and when I see the process it seems like it's going to be forever but I encourage you to keep pushing, pushing, pushing even though it looks hopeless I'm sure sometimes but it's important to our kids and our grandkids as everyone knows soon this agency will be taken over by a Trump-appointed majority and we can anticipate very different approaches to consumer safety indeed I think consumers should be very afraid of what this new majority will do we know that Commissioner Berkel now acting chair voted against scientists involved in all independent scientists with respect to phthalates and with respect to organohalogens she didn't even want to get the scientists involved in evaluating organohalogens voted in favor of all of the industries that make money off of these dangerous chemicals so I'm very concerned about that and my successor if we don't have any Republicans opposing these confirmations I'm told they'll be going through very quickly my successor is somebody who has represented companies that are in favor of these toxically dangerous chemicals including RJ Reynolds who I'm told even has advocated including these toxic organohalogens in our furniture so keep pushing we owe it to future generations and hopefully when this administration is gone we'll go back to consumer safety Mr. Wischdat I just wish that the representations made by you on behalf of PGMA and by your lobbyist Mr. Krennic in a very misleading press release recently were true I really truly do portable generators are one of the most dangerous products that we regulate and the danger is very much hidden while most people know the portable generators put off carbon monoxide almost no one knows from about 450 to a thousand cars idling in our garage in terms of the amount of carbon monoxide that come from these little machines our staff as you know has spent well over a decade trying unsuccessfully to get your organization and its members to use available technology to make these portable generators safer indeed in my first meeting with you almost five years ago I suggested maybe at least we could put longer extension cords on so that people can actually look them where they belong and your organization and your members wouldn't even do that seeing no movement by manufacturers our staff prepared a very thorough and excellent NPR in 2016 in which they concluded that lowering emissions is the only way that we're really going to save lives they thoroughly examined the possibility of shut off switch and your representation to Mr. to Commissioner Adler that what they did was ten years ago is just nonsense and they looked at the shut off switch because everyone hoped that that would be the answer because industry wouldn't fight us on a shut off switch because it's cheap and it's easy but that wasn't the answer they concluded that it wasn't the answer because of a number of things but two primary things one carbon monoxide migrates period so where the carbon monoxide is dangerous enough to kill somebody may not be at the generator and without lowering the CO emissions rate and the level of the parts per million that you would need it at at the generator to avoid nuisance shut offs it would not be such that you could prevent deaths and it's important to note and I think Commissioner Adler was probably more gently saying this everybody says things more gently than I do but it's important to know that nothing has changed with respect to our staff engineers analyses and conclusions since 2016 nothing fortunately UL went ahead with passing a voluntary standard it requires both lowering CO emissions and a shut off mechanism at the generator and I'm delighted that we have at least one manufacturer who I am told is now certified their generators to meet that standard now with respect to PGMA I as you know I was so optimistic when I visited Wisconsin almost 10 months ago that you really had found a way to address this with just a shut off mechanism because that would be the cheap easy way to go and I hoped that your data would back up your recommended updates to your PGMA G300 standard that would only require a shut off mechanism however since then and I'm not used to frankly having industry ignore my emails but you have consistently ignored multiple requests from me and I know my CPSC staff our CPSC staff has also requested the data all of the data that backup your recommendation that this is the answer which is contrary I'm going to remind my colleague that we're here to listen to the panelists speak and I would appreciate appropriate comments coming from you I think these are very appropriate and the the up until up until today and you said that there was a report two days ago I have not seen that it wasn't it wasn't sent to my office and I really hope that all the data is there so that our so that our staff can can evaluate that and that indeed our staff told me that they couldn't even get the PowerPoint presentations from the technical summits so the CPSC engineers are going ahead with their independent analysis of your representations but as commissioner Adler said they're only in the very preliminary stages and no conclusions have been made certainly our staff has not concluded as commissioner Adler said that the shut off switch is the solution I fully appreciate now that you have a tremendous advantage here at the commission our acting chair was the only chair who only commissioner who voted against the NPR and our new general council comes from your industry and fought vociferously against any safety measures and she's the one who would have to sign off on any mandatory rules so your request with respect to us backing off on a mandatory rule I'm sure is something that during this administration you're clearly safe on but I have to say that the UL standard and I don't know if your members frankly participated in that standard or not but I know that we have we have had radio silence from the chair's office for the first time in my five years of experience about the voluntary standard that was passed by UL in terms of supporting that and congratulations so I just I feel the need to point out several of the things that were in your presentation both written and oral that are simply not the case because I think it's so important that this agency it continue to work on making portable generators safer as I said staff is not concluded that the appropriate approach is a shutoff switch and you it is not you represented that your standards been proven effective it can't be proven effective if our staff engineers haven't had a chance to look at all the data to determine that that could be an effective approach and your statement that compliance has been demonstrated it's not even going to affect for two years so that's clearly not true and in response to the questions with respect to the 99% which our acting chair misstated as you saying it was an effective rate of 99% and in fairness to you that's not what is stated what stated is the new standard would and I quote address 99% of CO related fatalities resulting from misuse of portable generators where CO can accumulate and then you favorably compare that to the CPSC's 42% but there are several things that are missing there and there are subsets there I don't know how misuse is defined I've never heard a portable generator manufacturer ever say that any death resulted from anything other than misuse I don't know if it includes outdoor use because I'll tell you I was particularly struck with looking at a photo of a man who died and his generator was outside and his garage door was open only far enough to let the cord through and he still died from the carbon monoxide and there's a further subset of where CO can accumulate so until our staff has had a chance to really look at this I as you know from my representation to you in Wisconsin and since then I really really hope you found the answer but to represent that our staff thinks that's the answer so prematurely is not accurate thank you again I want to remind my colleagues we're here to listen to the public and to their comments and opinions and not to accuse them of misstating the truth Commissioner Kay thank you Madam Chair Mrs. D'Aritz thank you for coming in and for presenting an issue that I don't recall during my time at the commission where it's been so localized I know Commissioner Adler asked about whether there's other airports and I think that's an important question but to me this is squarely something that the agency should be working on so I thank you for bringing it to our attention I had read your written submission that came in a couple of weeks ago I had already raised it with our compliance staff and asked them to take a look at it obviously I'm not the chair anymore as I was during the lumber liquidators time in which I could direct staff as opposed to asking them to run it to ground but my hope is that the agency will do its part this is why you have a federal government this is why you pay taxes as we had to do with lumber liquidators I don't know if we could do this alone we might have to include ATSDR, CDC it sounds like FAA might have a component at least from a funding perspective they might bear some responsibility but I do think that this is something the agency should work on I know that we talked before this as I was making my way through the panel and you mentioned that you had been in touch with our staff so my hope is that the agency will take it seriously will work on it and these are very challenging issues they're expensive they take a lot of time to test and as you mentioned it's difficult sometimes to isolate the cause and then to tie that back to the health effects but the fact that it's challenging in my mind doesn't mean we shouldn't do it we have a responsibility to do it and I hope you'll stay on it and keep us honest on this issue we're doing our very best this is so complicated and so far reaching I didn't even touch on how it impacts our home values I can't sell my house unless I disclose I have these windows so what does that mean does that mean I have to make a concession on the sell price of my home who even knows if somebody wants to live there knowing those windows were there and we're talking 20,000 properties that's mind blowing billions of dollars and people that have come and gone out of these homes don't even know they were exposed or what they were exposed to and it goes to a lot of what Dr. Zuckerberg was talking about with regard to phthalates there's a lot of concerns about the phthalates that might be coming off the PVC and the worst offending window is in my son 17 year old son's bedroom he's been in that room since 2005 and he has ADHD he has obesity issues you know this can cause him to have low sperm count is he going to be able to have children we're scared to death we truly truly are and this is moving at a snail's pace and not only that and I hate to say it because I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all but it's smacks of a cover up somebody they've known about this for a long time if they've confirmed windows that go back as far as 1998 you cannot make me believe that they have not known and what was going on and to pull out windows without any kind of correct I understand a quality policy anybody that manages $550 million and touches as many homes as they do they don't have a quality policy in place to treat this as an anomaly was ridiculous because if you understand manufacturing you know that the products that were used in my windows were used in anybody else's windows in 2011 but now that we have 10 years or more that have been affected that have been confirmed is having this smell and that is extremely scary and why only Chicago I don't know well again hopefully that's something we really hope that between the ATSDR and the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Illinois Department of Health and all of the attorney generals that we're also going to turn to on this that we get to the bottom of this a lot faster than the 10 years that the CDA thinks it's going to take to replace all these windows so thank you so much my office and I will do our part I do think it's interesting that one of the issues that you raised at least in brief was that there might actually be a mechanical hazard as well that's an important area for our staff to evaluate my hope is that the chairman will as I do with the Lumber Liquidators case will give the staff the direction that they need to work on this so thank you for bringing to our attention thank you for the remaining panelists other than Ms. McGee we've obviously had many conversations over the years about these issues and so I just do want to spend my remaining time with Ms. McGee and you know I think to come in here and to talk about these issues after what you've gone through and certainly two years ago three years ago you never could have imagined that this is where you would be spending today and this is what you would be doing and why you would be doing it I think that while it's all well and good to thank you for coming I think you're actually you're owed a lot more than that I really do and first of all I think that you're owed an apology and as the chairman at the time at the agency at the time when we did the first recall even though we made the best decision that I think we could have made others might disagree but we made the best decision that we could have made and we gave it our best efforts it wasn't good enough and for that I'm sorry and the buck stopped with me as the chairman and so I'm apologizing to you for my failure that our best efforts were not good enough and even beyond that I think you're owed our continued best efforts and I have to say that unfortunately in the last year plus I don't see us continuing with our best efforts and you mentioned a bunch of different factors that are involved there's the voluntary standards effort and there's a difference between the staff going in there without any cover and advocating as best as they could but not being supported by the agency leadership I think they deserve more support I don't think they're actually asking for a lot I think they're being reasonable they're asking for the 50 pound limit to go to 60 pound limits the irony of course in that is that that actually makes the standard truer to what's currently written in the standard it's supposed to cover the 95th percentile up to age 5 kids it doesn't getting to 60 pounds would actually do that so that's not really changing the standard it's just making it more honest of what's on paper I think it's a big ask I think consumer reports did a phenomenal job of demonstrating as you pointed out that many companies are already doing this and so I don't think that's a very big ask and I don't think it's a lot for the leadership of the agency to backstab on that but it's not happening right now and that's not our best efforts our best efforts also include as you mentioned the mandatory standard it's taken a lot it was a lot of effort while I was chair to start the process it was a lot of effort it did get a unanimous vote but I'm not seeing a best efforts approach to urge staff to move that along as quickly as possible and to make that a top priority I think we should be doing that and I'd like to see the staff do that I don't think it takes much to go from an ANPR to an NPR I realize that's somewhat inside baseball talk but really from phase 1 to phase 2 I don't think it's that complicated an issue we've been studying this long and I would like to see us do that quickly and I think it's fair for you to expect us to do that that's part of our best efforts and even on the education side education as Commissioner Adler mentioned has a role to play unfortunately it gets overblown a lot and I thought that you actually captured it best if anybody I've ever heard come before the commission why should something be sold incomplete that requires the consumer to actually finish the job that was phenomenally put and that's the frustration that I've had with the education campaigns is that it offloads to the consumer responsibility that I don't think is fair and I'm a parent of young children and even with what I know I have a hard time keeping up with all the safety things that need to be done in a household and so on education campaigns one of the things that some of us have tried to push is and Ms. Coles mentioned this is an evaluation component we spent a lot of money for this agency on education campaigns without having any idea whether it works or not and it's been difficult to get the agency to focus on actually studying our campaigns to see if they work and making sure that the money we spent is well spent and I think our best efforts would be making a bigger priority of that effort and so it's well it's great to thank you for coming here what matters in the long term is what we do from here on out and whether we continue to inspire ourselves and I hope that you'll continue to push us and I'll say this to Lisa as well and to all the rest of the parents especially because you bear a special burden of holding our feet to the fire and it's important for us to make sure that we're doing everything we can that we come in every day and stay true to the agency's mission and so thank you for coming in but I think you deserve more than that in my part with our best efforts thank you I have no more questions, thank you we will now take, let me begin by saying thank you again to all of you for your time here today and we will now take a five minute break to transition to panel number two thank you again for being here thank you, welcome back we will now resume with our second panel which includes Ms. Rachel Weintraub Consumer Federation of America Ms. Kristen Kern Foodware Association Dr. Sarah Denney the American Academy of Pediatrics Ms. Jennifer Cleary the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers and Ms. Eve Gardner from Earth Justice welcome to all of you we look forward to hearing your testimony we may begin Ms. Weintraub thank you acting chairman Berkel and commissioners I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on CPSC's FY 2019 and 2020 priorities on behalf of Consumer Federation of America I'm Rachel Weintraub CFA's Legislative Director and General Counsel the CPSC is an incredibly important agency its mission impacts every American every day to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated from the use of consumer products the CPSC has numerous tools to fulfill this mission all of these tools must be used to effectively protect consumers the CPSC's mission relies upon agency action to issue for example mandatory standards assess civil and criminal penalties work on voluntary standards conduct recalls and educate consumers it is imperative for consumers and for the regulated community that CPSC's laws are enforced rigorously and consistently and that all of the tools congress gave the CPSC are used my focus today focuses on key product safety issues and really summarize my written testimony the CPSC is aware of 335 deaths and 506 injuries related to recreational off-highway vehicle crashes from January 2003 to April 2013 my organization and its partners document fatalities and we documented 499 fatalities between January 1st 2013 and March of this year we documented 130 fatalities in 2017 which is the highest annual fatality count to date CFA also completed an analysis of OHV recalls and found that over the past 8 years that the highest number of recalls occurred during the past 3 years and 2017 had the most recalls we had the CPSC to immediately investigate this increase in OHV recalls second we are concerned about the failure to act on known OHV fire hazards quickly and effectively on December 19th 2017 the CPSC and Polaris for example issued a short statement about Polaris RZR 900s and 1000 ROVs and particular fire risks but at that time there was not enough information for consumers to take we applaud the recall of RZR XP 1000s however the RZR 900s were not part of that recall and the recall focused on one specific hazard this still leaves some consumers without enough information to protect themselves we appreciate the record 27.25 million dollar civil penalty assessed against Polaris for failing to report effective ROVs to the CPSC it's imperative the CPSC hold entities responsible for re-disconduct we also understand that an important lawsuit was filed last week seeking to hold Polaris accountable for defects that cause fires and we hope that this can shed more light on the fire risk the voluntary standards for these vehicles must be updated to address fire hazards and we urge the CPSC to issue injury and fatality statistics for ROVs annually this past January a new version of the window covering voluntary standard was approved that will require stock products some products to be cordless this was an achievement however much more work must be done to prevent strangulation hazards posed by corded window covering since approximately 11 children die and 80 children are treated for entanglement and near fatal injuries every single year and the standard does not address window coverings already in homes we are concerned that non-compliant products could be sold online and that hazardous corded stock inventory will be liquidated throughout this year the CPSC, the WCMA and others must affirmatively educate consumers about the strangulation risks corded window coverings pose further the CPSC should monitor the marketplace to ensure that the voluntary standard will create loopholes allowing for more products to in fact have cords a mandatory standard is necessary to make operating cords for all window coverings inaccessible on flame retardants and consumer products we appreciate that the CPSC voted to move forward on our organo halogen petition we applaud the commission for working to convene the CHAP and we urge the agency to move forward as quickly as possible we also applaud the CPSC's issuance of a guidance document on the flame retardants as used in children's products upholstered furniture, mattresses and electronic casings on recall effectiveness the vast majority of consumers who own a recalled product never find out about the recall this means that some unsafe products remain unwittingly in homes we appreciate that notes from last summer's recall meeting were recently made available and that the CPSC held that meeting we agree with how the workshop report characterized the stakeholder suggestions we urge the CPSC and others to explore ways to increase direct notice to consumers expand the use of marketing strategies and technology consider consumer and business incentives and disseminate additional information on best practices as well as to finalize the voluntary recall rule another high priority for the CPSC should be saferproducts.gov 35,640 reports have been posted to saferproducts.gov and it continues to be an important tool for consumers researchers, doctors, consumers and the CPSC based on our analysis from November 2016 we recommend that the CPSC continue to explore how to make this database even more useful and accessible including increasing promotion of the site expanding the data sources included in saferproducts.gov releasing reports on data trends and improving data categories and searchability. On CPSIA implementation because of these rules promulgated under the CPSIA 19 infant durable products must now meet robust mandatory standards the 2011 CRIP standard for example is the strongest CRIP standard in the world we urge the CPSC to continue to commit the staff time and resources to prioritize these rules and to add additional products under section 104 regarding high powered magnets the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th circuit decision struck down the CPSC's high power magnet set rule that we supported strongly more rare earth magnets are entering the market creating hazards that could severely injure or kill children we urge the CPSC to take strong action to educate the public about these hazards and to reissue the rule on all terrain vehicles according to the most recent data from the CPSC at least 101,200 people were injured while riding all terrain vehicles in 2016. The estimated number of ATV related fatalities was 647 for 2015 which included at least three children under the age of 16 the CPSC must prioritize this issue we urge the agency to complete the ATV rulemaking which should also analyze the hazards posed to children the adequacy of ATV safety safety and training materials efforts to ensure that children are not riding inappropriate ATVs OHV operation on roads is growing and we urge the agency to prioritize its opposition of operating OHVs on roads and educate consumers about the dangers of on-road OHV use. On furniture tip-overs there's not much more I could add to what Janet McGee so effectively and articulately stated I would only add that much more needs to be done to improve the voluntary standard we support the CPSC's ANPR and believe that the mandatory standard that is stronger than the current voluntary standard is necessary on laundry packets highly concentrated laundry detergent packets can pose a serious risk of injury to children and to older adults we support strengthening the voluntary standard to acquire individually wrapped packets requirements for the design, color, and ingredients as well we urge the CPSC to be fully engaged in the standards process monitor the incident data with an effective mandatory standard if in fact the voluntary standard is not proving effective in conclusion the CPSC plays a critical role in ensuring consumers are safe from product hazards we urge the CPSC to use its enforcement tools to protect consumers and we look forward to working with you to achieve these goals. Thank you very much and thank you very much Ms. Kern Thank you. I can share in general with all commissioners thank you for holding today's hearing and providing this forum for constructive dialogue on behalf of the American Apparel and Footwear Association I appreciate the opportunity to testify today regarding the commission's agenda and priorities for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 AAFA is the National Trade Association representing apparel, footwear travel goods, and other sewn products companies and their suppliers which compete in the global market we're proud of the open and collaborative that we share with the commission many of our members are engaged in the production and sale of children's clothing and footwear so we're on the front lines of product safety it is our members who design and execute the quality and compliance programs that stitch product safety into every garment and shoe that we make to support our members in this effort AAFA has taken the lead in educating our industry on the development, interpretation and implementation of product safety standards and regulations. The priorities that we hope the commission will adopt are as follows reducing testing and regulatory burdens associated with spandex. Last year we began working with the commission to review the testing burdens associated with testing spandex to meet the requirements of the flammable fabrics act 16 CFR 1610 Section D2 of 16 CFR 1610 exempts fabrics regardless of weight made entirely from or from a combination of six types of fibers and however does not include spandex even though spandex blend garments consistently past flammability tests AAFA compiled results from spandex flammability testing and provided findings to the commission to discuss exempting spandex from current testing standards we appreciate the commission's willingness to work with us thus far on reviewing the addition of spandex to the exempt fibers list and we hope that the commission will prioritize continuing this effort to reduce testing burdens for companies without compromising product safety. Working to harmonize product safety regulations we need to make sure that individual states and countries have a common approach to product safety this is currently not the case the proliferation of conflicting and contradictory product safety standards are among the biggest product safety challenges of our time we believe that the commission has tools through which it can foster a more unified and international approach to product safety we hope that the commission can focus some of its resources on this priority issue building industry commission collaboration we want to stress the importance of the commission using AAFA as well as other associations as a resource when developing not only standards but guidance documents and educational events we believe that it is integral to our mission to educate the industry on its domestic and international product safety compliance obligations AAFA and its members truly appreciate the opportunity to work with the commission and we look forward to continuing that relationship through fiscal years 2019 and 2020 and beyond in conclusion we're delighted to have a positive relationship with the commission and we believe that there are many opportunities for further collaboration we look forward to working with the commission to reduce testing and regulatory burdens harmonize the product safety approach between states and abroad and build collaboration between the industry and the commission for the benefit of consumer product safety thank you very much Dr. Denny okay thanks my name is Dr. Sarah Denny I'm a pediatrician in Columbus Ohio where I work in a pediatric emergency department I'm here today on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics I sit on the executive committee for the council on injury violence and poison prevention for the AAP and I very much appreciate this opportunity to make recommendations to you about what the academy feels CPSC should prioritize in the next two fiscal years I know we've already talked a bit about safe sleep I'm going to talk about it again because it's one of our biggest priority areas the AAP appreciates the CPSC's ongoing work to promote safe sleep but as you know much work still needs to be done to reduce our country's high incidence of sudden unexplained infant death or suicide the CDC found that in 2015 there are approximately 3,700 suicide deaths in the United States that's a baby dying every two and a half hours from suicide there's a study published in February of this year in pediatrics that found there have been sharp declines in the rates of SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome since the 1990s and this is associated with those national efforts that you're aware of at the back to sleep campaign most notably but while the rate of SIDS has decreased the bad news is there's been a remarkable lack of progress in decreasing SIDS deaths in the last two decades so just to kind of clarify in the terminology because I feel like it gets very complicated with SIDS and what all this means SIDS is an umbrella term and that describes deaths due to SIDS also asphyxiation, strangulation and suffocation as well as unknown causes so there's been a diagnostic shifts as corners are going out and doing more death scene investigations they are coding less of these cases as SIDS and more related to the sleep environment or asphyxiation and that kind of thing so SID deaths the majority of which happened in the first six months of life remains stubbornly high we can and must do more to prevent the thousands of safe sleep deaths that still occur every year the CPSC is in a unique position to help address the public health problem of SID through its jurisdiction over infant products as well as opportunities to communicate to families caregivers and health care providers however current efforts to promote safe sleep are not reducing deaths especially in the high-risk populations this is an issue desperately in need of new approaches in addition CPSC can and should strengthen its safe sleep messaging by banning crib bumpers we're eager to learn the status of the CPSC staff work to develop a performance standard for crib bumpers and urge you not to slow this work down there's no evidence that bumper pads prevent injuries but there's significant potential risk for suffocation strangulation or entrapment we'd also urge CPSC to pay attention to the open safety questions regarding the baby boxes there's insufficient data right now on what the role is for these cardboard boxes currently there are randomized control trials being conducted in New Zealand and Australia but there's nothing that's been published yet further the AAP supports a ban on supplemental mattresses and playards with non-rigid sides as you know these have no place in a safe sleep environment they pose a risk for suffocation hazard in infants and were pleased to see legislation banning them in New Jersey regulatory actions, investigation of optimal safe sleep messaging and sustained public health communication can be central CPSC's efforts to address sewage next I'd like to address liquid laundry detergent packets reducing child exposures to liquid laundry laundry detergent packets remains a priority for the academy the AAP's participated in the ASTM process to improve the safety of these products and we're glad to see the ASTM F3159-15 voluntary standards published in 2015 but we're concerned that the ASTM subcommittees work to track efficacy of the volunteer voluntary standard will use inappropriate metrics specifically we're concerned that some of the stakeholders who are pursuing the use of an inappropriate denominator to determine the effectiveness of the ASTM voluntary standard in reducing harm to children from these packets the appropriate way to use the public health approach is assessing the standards efficacies to calculate the incidence rate of packet exposures by dividing the number of exposures to the packets by the number of individuals at risk of the exposure however despite our suggestions the group is still considering dividing the number of exposures by the number of products sold a number which is growing every year and which is not a public health-based measure we're concerned that such a metric could falsely make it appear that the ASTM standard is more effective than it actually is by masking an unacceptably high child exposure rate the equivalent of this is trying to demonstrate the effectiveness of an intervention to a Zika related disease by measuring the number of Zika cases divided by the mosquito population we urge CPSC to stay engaged in the ASTM process and ensure follow-up of the implementation that the standard occurs appropriate metrics are used to evaluate effectiveness and that meaningful decreases in exposures and exposure rates occur just touching briefly on liquid nicotine the AAP strongly supported the enactment of the child nicotine poisoning prevention act of 2015 which requires CPSC to enforce the mandatory child resistant packaging material however the AAP continues to find examples of non-compliant products available for sale both in vape shops and online we've shared the details of these products already with the commission we feel that CPSC should do more to ensure that manufacturers are aware of and complying with the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act I'm going to talk briefly about window coverings I know you guys hear a lot about that topic at this hearing but there is some new data that I wanted to share with you today window cord coverings prevent and avoid avoidable home hazard infants and toddlers near a window can grab and become entangled just in December of 2017 a study was published in Pediatrics found that from 1990 to 2015 there was an estimated 16,827 window blind related injuries among kids younger than six years these are kids who are treated in emergency departments in the United States giving you an injury rate of about 2.7 per 100,000 children this is likely an underestimation because it doesn't take into account those children who are seeking care at their primary care physicians or those who are not seeking treatment at all the most common mechanism of injury is the struck by which was 48.8% entanglement injuries accounted for 11.9% of all cases among and among the subgroup 98.9 involved the blind cords overall most injuries 93.4 were treated and released this data came from the CPSC's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System the in-depth investigation databases retrospectively analyzed in the IDI reports from 1996 to 2012 researchers identified 231 window blind cord entanglements incidents in kids less than six years of age 98.7 of those involved the child's neck two-thirds of entanglement incidents included in the IDI database resulted in death so although many of these injuries were non-fatal and resulted in mild injuries cases involving window blind cord entanglements frequently resulted in hospitalization or death a mandatory safety standard that eliminates accessible blind cords should be adopted the AP was glad to see the movement last year on the voluntary standard recommending cordless window blinds for all stock products this represents a long overdue step forward by the industry however the academy feels that CPSC should also apply this safety standard to custom blinds as well and to make this voluntary standard a mandatory one a mandatory standard prohibiting accessible window covering cords is the only way to ensure that all kids are protected from this avoidable hazard in all homes going forward for example currently the voluntary standard will have no effect on rental units in which tenants are unable to change out the window coverings in their unit and then putting those children at risk contrary to misleading statements in the press voluntary standards are not the same as mandatory standards and we expect CPSC to acknowledge this fact when its representatives speak to the press recreational off-highway vehicles and all train vehicles I know Rachel already touched on this briefly from the pediatric perspective we continue to see tragedies and disabilities that result from children on the ROVs and ATVs kids are not developmentally ready to operate these heavy complex machines and no child under the age of 16 should be operating an ROV or ATV children should not even be passengers on ROVs or ATVs but despite our best efforts to educate and prevent children's use of these machines children continue to suffer injuries and deaths we want to do more to prevent these injuries and we applaud the CPSC for its recent levy of a meaningful civil penalty against Polaris for failing to report its defective ROVs to the CPSC as required by law the CPSC is an important agency whose work impacts the lives of infants and children every day and we very much appreciate that we urge the commission as it moves forward into the next physical year to prioritize work on these issues and products laid out herein we're grateful for the opportunity to comment and look forward to assisting the commission in protecting the health of all children Thank you very much Dr. Denny Ms. Cleary for allowing me to be here today to share my comments on the commission's budget and priorities for 2019 and 2020 I'm Jennifer Cleary the senior director of regulatory affairs with the association of home appliance manufacturers or AHAM AHAM represents manufacturers of major portable and floor care home appliances and suppliers to the industry our members top priority is to design products that are as safe as they are useful AHAM safety standards activities are aimed at developing and commenting on proposals from SDOs such as UL and CSA we have made and supported a significant number of safety proposals almost 70 for major and portable appliances in the past six years today I'd like to touch briefly on four topics counterfeit water filters for refrigerators the refrigerator safety act voluntary standards and joint research and the internet of things first on counterfeit water filters for refrigerators counterfeit and deceptively labeled water filters are sold online every day consumers are purchasing these thinking that they're buying a genuine filter to mitigate their concerns about drinking water which in many places in the U.S. contains impurities such as lead genuine filters remove these harmful contaminants counterfeit products do not in response as you know AHAM has developed a public information campaign through our website filteritout.org and other means on the existence of the dangers associated with counterfeit water filters for refrigerators our goal has been to raise awareness and to give consumers a trusted source to purchase a genuine product we've also been regularly meeting with the commission on this issue and most recently we met with each of you to present our data demonstrating that counterfeit water filters are not only not removing contaminants but in many cases adding contaminants to the water we also have a meeting plan to meet with staff as well on this issue and I know we owe you some follow up from our recent meetings with you in addition we've been meeting with CBP and the IPR center to begin work to get these counterfeit products out of consumers hands as we've shared with you our goal is to work with you to stop these products at the border by elevating this to a health and safety risk and to get the message out to a broader group of consumers we appreciate the interest that you have shown in working with us on this issue and we respectfully ask that you include this as a priority in the budget for 2019 and 2020 as this is a complicated issue which will no doubt take time to address moving to the refrigerator safety act because the old refrigerator safety act in order to prevent refrigerators with latches or similar closures requires refrigerators to be opened from the inside manufacturers must file general certificates of conformity certifying that refrigerators comply with their requirements of the act modern refrigerators do not have latches and the current UL safety standard in a more modern manner requires refrigerators to be opened from the inside thus GCC our wasteful paperwork exercise at this point that do not protect the public but are burdensome for manufacturers manufacturers are often listing all of the models that comply which is all of their refrigerator models on a single label to most efficiently comply with the GCC requirement but this means that when new models are added or when models are changed the label must be changed the old ones discarded new ones affixed to the product so this constant monitoring and changing of labels is adding considerable cost and burden with no corresponding safety benefit so as part of CPSC's retroactive review a him respectfully requests that the commission include this in its priorities so that we can work together to mitigate the burden associated with this outdated law specifically we think that the commission could change its rules to recognize the existence of the safety certification mark to stand in the place of the GCC alternatively the commission could expressly indicate in writing that it will not enforce the requirement for GCC for refrigerators so long as the refrigerator bears the safety certification mark these changes would not represent any change in safety for the consumer but they would have an enormous and helpful impact for manufacturers third I'd like to address partnership on voluntary standards and on joint research with the commission we regularly work with CPSC staff on voluntary safety standards and we're glad to see continued commitment to participation on voluntary safety standards committees and task forces the participation of CPSC staff has been critical in a number of areas and products we also successfully collaborate on many issues with CPSC staff to inform proposals that AHAM is making to UL and CSA and as I mentioned we've been prolific with almost 70 standards for 70 proposals to UL and CSA for portable and major appliances in the past six years we thank the staff for their continued and coordinated work with us and we seek the commission's continued support for these important efforts which effectively and efficiently advance a number of product safety issues these could include joint research projects which we haven't done in a little bit of time to address knowledge gaps before moving to develop tests we don't have specific projects to propose at this time but we do have a few that we think could be possibilities in the next couple of years and so we'd like to ask for room to address those together finally on the internet of things we thank the commission for the IOT notice that was published in the federal register and we'll be glad to provide our input on that in the coming month or two this is certainly a complicated issue to say the least that will require feedback from a variety of stakeholders and thoughtful leadership from CPSC staff and the commission to ensure that consumers are protected but also able to enjoy the benefits from the innovation associated with these products thank you again for allowing me to provide my feedback today. Thank you very much Ms. Gartner. Thank you Chairman Burkle and commissioners and thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you today I am Eve Gartner from Earth Justice along with Rachel Weintraub at the other end of this table I represent the organizations that petitioned the commission and the sale of four categories of consumer products containing additive non-polymeric organic halogen flame retardants as a class my clients who include the International Association of Firefighters, the American Academy of Pediatrics National Hispanic Medical Association the American Medical Women's Association Consumers Union, Green Science Policy Institute, Learning Disabilities Association of America and others thank the commission very much for its votes last year to grant our petition and to ask the national academies to convene a chronic hazard advisory panel chronic yes we also thank the commission for its guidance publication which offers an important warning to manufacturers, retailers and consumers about the hazards of organic halogen flame retardants as a class in additive form getting additive organic halogens out of consumer products will have very meaningful health benefits for virtually everyone who lives in this country and especially for children we urge the commission to make this rulemaking a priority over the next two fiscal years and to move forward with completing the rulemaking as expeditiously as possible we also urge the commission to continue to publicize its guidance document so that retailers and consumers in particular are aware of the safety concerns that this commission has flagged I would also note that the petitioners would very much welcome periodic status updates from the commission on the CHAP process and its timeline I also want to urge the commission to move forward with adopting California TB 117 2013 the furniture flammability standard that was adopted in California several years ago as a national furniture flammability standard this standard offers important protection against smoldering sources which are the most significant sources of furniture fires and one of the key things about this California standard is it can be met without the use of additive flame retardant chemicals there is wide support for this standard among firefighters among furniture manufacturers and among public health advocates and scientists so adopting it as a national standard should be a no-brainer for this commission we urge the commission to move forward with this in the coming fiscal years as a corollary to that it is imperative that CPSC not itself adopt any furniture flammability standard that would as a practical matter result in use of any chemical flame retardant chemicals chemicals that are replacements for organohalogens also have been found to present serious risks of harm so simply banning products with organohalogens isn't a complete solution to this problem we have to stop creating a demand for flame retardant chemicals in furniture and the answer is a national furniture flammability standard that protects against the most common sources of fires but doesn't require the use of added chemicals and there are many ways to protect consumers from furniture fires smoked in addition to the TB-117 2013 standard smoke detectors fire safety education and sprinklers are very effective methods of protecting people from fires and don't harm human health or our ecosystems just historically I think we all acknowledge that it was a major mistake to add toxic flame retardants to our furniture for decades as a way to reduce the very small number of open flame furniture related fire deaths we recklessly added a carcinogen the flame retardant Penta BDE to our nation's furniture for decades and we are paying the consequences this has limited our children's IQs it's impaired their ability to learn and it's caused a range of other health problems across the population that's been documented in human health studies safer nonchemical prevention methods are available and we cannot continue to repeat the same mistake with another generation of toxic chemicals so we strongly urge CPSC not to adopt any open flame flammability standard for furniture and to go forward with the TB-117 2013 smoldering standard as a national standard thank you again for all you are doing to protect consumers by ensuring that consumer products are fire safe and that they do not contain unnecessary additive toxic chemicals I'm happy to answer any questions thank you thank you very much and thank you again to all of our panelists we will now begin our commission ten round ten minute rounds of questions and I will begin the questions Ms. Weintraub I wanted to just talk to you a little bit about the anchor at campaign and I appreciate your support for the campaign and I see it as one prong of a campaign to help eliminate deaths from tip overs can you perhaps shed some light on how you think we could make that campaign more effective you heard from the first panel that maybe the message isn't getting out there how can we ramp that up so because if we strengthen the standard if we pass a mandatory standard regardless of those two efforts there are still millions and millions that we need to let the parents be made aware of so that we can avoid any catastrophes or tragedies in their home so could you maybe speak to that a little bit sure thank you very much for the question I think sort of similar to the safe sleep campaign anchor it is rather complicated for American consumers first the studies that I've seen is that Americans overwhelmingly do not anchor their furniture to the wall it's something that culturally Americans do not do extensively there are numerous reasons for that I think Ms. McGee first of all articulated it so well as Commissioner Kay mentioned in terms of you know products need to be stable before they're sold and it shouldn't be up to consumers to finish the job so many pieces of furniture that are unstable there certainly is a lot of education that needs to happen so I think number one it's complicated because American consumers don't routinely attach their furniture to the wall there are some consumers that cannot because they live in specific properties that don't allow it second I think it's really important with all consumer education campaigns to evaluate it is it working is it not working is it changing behavior who how many people are being reached by it and is it having the attended effect so I think those types of evaluations are incredibly important I do think that while education is incredibly important because even if a stronger mandatory standard does eventually going to affect to make furniture inherently stable which is our desire we still have the issue of all of the products in consumers home so communicating with consumers making sure that they are in fact getting the message is something that we all need to do a much more effective job with. Thank you very much miss Gardner I agree with your petition petition or your position about the adoption of TB 117 as a national standard I tried to get my colleagues to support my position and unfortunately I couldn't but I would like to ask you what is the basis for that approach and maybe just elaborate on that a little bit well that approach has been in place in California now for several years and I think that it's still a bit early to have clear studies showing the impact of it but I think it's clear that there certainly has been no increase in fire related deaths or injuries since that standard went into effect and there has been a fairly dramatic reduction in the use of flame retardants toxic flame retardants in furniture though they're still finding about 20 to 25 percent of the furniture still in California still does contain flame retardants which is part of why we think our petition to ban the organic halogen flame retardants is still highly relevant but they're finding that to be an effective approach in California which is obviously a very significant furniture market. Thank you very much miss Clary the counterfeit water filters I want to first of all want to thank you we have our regular meetings with Ahem and in our last meeting we talked about the campaign that you referred to the educational campaign about letting consumers be aware of the fact that there are these counterfeit water filters out there and not only do they not do what they're supposed to do but I think your testimony and meeting and the data that you provided indicates that they not only not take out possible toxins but they also may may put some in the water so I look forward to receiving that information on educational campaign and see if we can't do partner at least help you get the message out through our agency but I think consumer awareness is a big piece of this and again I want to thank Ahem for the collaborative efforts with our staff I know that they value the meetings and the information that's shared and look forward to continuing that Dr. Denny I appreciate your remarks about safe sleep and I asked in the first panel from Miss Culls from Kids in Danger same question it's a complicated message and I'm wondering how we can simplify that message how we can be united in that message and so the consumer is confused and if you have any insights on that I would appreciate hearing that those. Thank you for the question as far as the message you're right it is such a complicated issue and we're struggling you know on the medical side to figure out how to do it and I think the overall message that a lot of us are using I would say not just within medicine but also the health departments Cribs for Kids like all these different organizations are using the ABC's of safe sleep so that really seems to be the standardized kind of message that we're trying to promote but the other thing that we're realizing within our own community is it's not one size fits all you know sometimes parents sleep with their kids for different reasons you know one of the new issues that's just coming up in this past year is with all the housing and security now there's air mattresses and we're seeing deaths related to air mattresses that wasn't an issue that I knew of two years ago when I sat before the commission and so you know what we're doing in the pediatricians office is really trying to get to the specific barriers to safe sleep with families and I know that's not as much kind of your area of what you guys are doing but I think that as one of the other panelists had recommended you know when a new parent or an expectant family walks into a baby store to do their registry they assume that everything in that store is safe for their kid because they're selling it in the store however we all in this room know that that is not the case and so you know clarifying about the empty crib for example is critical I think that they get such mixed messages when they go in these stores and they see all these different apparatuses that they can put their kid in or put in the crib with their baby and that really is confusing and then we're trying to counteract you know that messaging that they're getting when they're in the store with what's really the safest thing for your baby so I do think that the ABC's of safe sleep is the right message but I think that getting down to the next level as to what those barriers are is helpful and then also on the product side really emphasizing that the empty crib is the best place for the baby to sleep thank you you mentioned the laundry packets as Ms. Weintraub and I think in my time left if you could each I'll start with Dr. Denny and then to Ms. Weintraub what do you think the appropriate metrics would be in measuring laundry packets and whether or not the volunteer standard is adequate and whether it's addressing the hazard well so I mean from a public health position we would want the denominator to be the number of children not the number of packets that would be the appropriate I mean that's how we measure the incidence of any other injury I'm not clear as to why a different standard would apply on this particular mechanism thank you and I would agree I think looking at the rate as some have proposed is over the number of products sold is really not the as I've learned through working very closely with AAP over the years is not the right way to assess a public health measure thank you very much and lastly I just want to talk a little bit about the baby boxes that's something our staff is participating in the conversations and the voluntary standards development are your your understanding is there's no research being done here in the United States talked about Australia and New Zealand but can you speak to the issue of the baby boxes I know you did in your testimony but the concept seems so popular but maybe you could just address it in my short time that's left yeah I really appreciate that you are talking about this because I probably like you guys are getting weekly calls from the media asking about it and I don't know what to say we don't have data we don't have we don't know yet the reason why baby boxes have sort of come into vogue is because Finland gives these baby boxes out and have for extended periods of time and they have a very low infant mortality rate so a correlation has been made that the infant mortality rate is low because of the baby boxes does not take into account access to health care smoking I mean many many other factors that we know relates to infant mortality rate and so you know all of a sudden that these baby boxes have really gained popularity in the United States it is true that some families do not have a safe place to put their infant and so that is a challenge where can they put their baby if they can't afford a crib however in our own hospital we screen every family in our state it is the law that every family screened before they leave the birth hospital for a safe safe place and if they don't one is provided for them with a pack and play or a play yard or primary care they are screened every time they come into the emergency department they are screened and every time they go to an urgent care they are screened the percentage of families based on our data at our hospital that actually don't have a safe place to sleep is very low it is not that they don't have the place it is that they are not doing a safe sleep environment so as far as the baby boxes go I know different health departments are handing them out I believe somewhere in Texas as far as are they seeing any changes in their infant mortality rate but I would be really interested if you guys are hearing things to keep that dialogue open because the academy is getting a lot of questions and you have health departments spending a lot of money on this piece of equipment that we don't know is this helpful, is this harmful, is this a good idea we just don't know Thank you very much Commissioner Adler Thank you very much and thanks again to the panelists I am always struck by one fact and that is in all the years that the commission has been around we have dozens of safety standards for children's products and that makes sense, they are a vulnerable population but in all the years the commission has been in existence we have promulgated a grand total of no safety standards whatsoever for home appliances that is not the commission being derelict I would suggest so much as we work cooperatively with the industry I appreciate that but there is one safety standard and that is the refrigerator safety act that was enacted by legislation in 1956 I appreciate the concern your members have about GCCs being expensive and burdensome I am not so certain I am persuaded on the point but I do have a problem with that and my problem is it is not intuitive unless you go on the internet and look up retro refrigerators and what you will find is there is a huge and robust market for pre 1956 refrigerators just yesterday I found out for the modest sum of $3400 you can buy an original fridge and one of the things they tout is the pivoting handle which is the latch on a pre-1956 refrigerator and my concern is if we were to support the withdrawal of this legislation that would open the market up to people who want to produce retro refrigerators more modern with the pivoting handles and so I am curious if you have any concern about this retro market I am a little unclear are you speaking firstly of products that were manufactured that is exactly right and just to be precise if I have a refrigerator that was produced prior to 1956 the commission cannot touch it believe me I have asked I have said well what if they have upgraded it what if they have retrofitted it to make it look more modern which is how they are selling them and at least the report I got from staff was we lacked any jurisdiction to go after these pre-1956 refrigerators they are still legal to be sold and they are still being sold and that is my concern and I am wondering if you all have thought about that and are those subject to the GCC requirement they would not be subject to the GCC requirement because they are not subject to the law so I think that then under what I was speaking about we wouldn't apply to those products so I don't think that is something we have thought about in that context and any new refrigerators that might be made to mimic that sort of old feel of course are subject to the voluntary safety standard so for the products that are on the market that were manufactured previously I am not sure what we could do to address those or if we are seeing deaths and I understand the GCC problem and it may be solvable with your suggestions my concern is one way of resolving that that you have raised is to go and abolish, withdraw the law and that is not something I am inclined to do but I thank you for your remarks Ms. Weintraub I know that you personally in CFA and other organizations have been working on ATV safety forever and I recall that I left the commission in 1984 and ATVs were high on our priorities and when I came back, guess what they are still high on our priorities and we are still working to promote safety one of the big concerns that you personally have pushed along with CFA is efforts to get states to stop passing laws that permit ATVs on highways especially paved roads first of all can you describe what the hazard is particularly are you concerned about the bleak future of what is happening with respect to this phenomenon as I am Thank you for the question and unfortunately yes out of all the issues that I have worked on over the years the issue of OHVs has been particularly challenging and I am not seeing that we are going in the right direction in terms of safety CFA has been working on ATVs as you mentioned for a very long time and what we do is when we see something we evaluate it we conduct analysis to see if our perception is actually true and in terms of OHV on roads we did a state by state analysis and found that in fact more and more states are allowing OHVs on roads either by passing legislation broadly or more commonly they are allowing jurisdictions the ability to make those determinations on their own and we have seen more and more states passing legislation I believe we are up to 36 states that allow OHVs on roads or delegate that authority to an entity within the state and our activities continue as robustly as we can we work with partners we identify through the media whenever we hear about usually it's a local municipality sometimes these ordinances are passed by entities that don't have websites don't have emails so it's a real challenge for us we are constantly trying to include people on the ground who are aware of what's going on in their communities and who are frankly more knowledgeable about the dynamics going on in those particular areas we partner with the American Academy of Pediatrics and others we're constantly looking for additional partnerships and we send letters and then follow up on those letters communicating the risk of operating OHVs on roads OHVs are not designed for OHV use it says so in manuals it says so on the vehicle themselves and unfortunately it's created an incredibly complicated patchwork sometimes in states there's different rules in different counties but incredibly confusing for consumers who they can legally operate these OHVs on roads and yet it's recommended against their use it minimizes the efficacy of the warning label so this is an area that we continue to prioritize for our organization and we would welcome additional support as well as the agency who I know has supported this idea of opposing increase OHV use on roads and also Ms. Weintraub you do make an observation that several other witnesses have made and will make about saferproducts.gov I think that was a major step forward it's not as big a step as we need which is to repeal this horrendous provision called section 6B of the Consumer Product Safety Act but I was struck by this report that was done by CFA and other groups called saferproducts.gov five years live and one of the data points you cite is the number of complaints that have been received by two agencies CFPB and CPSC because we both set our databases up roughly the same time they got 622,000 complaints and we've had according to this time frame and it's gone up a little bit 29,000 do you have any idea why the discrepancy between the number of complaints coming in to CPSC versus CFPB? There's certainly some things we know some things we don't know financial products tend to hit at the core of consumers personal finances and especially when they involve a lot of money it could be devastating for consumers so I think there is one inherent difference between financial products and consumer products however the CFPB had prioritized communicating about this database they did monthly reports sharing what information they had trends they could see from this data slicing and dicing the information in very useful ways for academics consumers the media so I think that has gone a very long way in terms of making their tool much more well known in the broader consumer and academic community and I think I know when the CFPB database was created they really did look to CPSCs because it was a few steps ahead in terms of how it was created and the CFPBs includes narratives which are incredibly important which CPSCs does as well but I think we do have a lot to learn and we need to do a lot more and with our report we've been trying and we pretty much as a rule always mention the database when we communicate to the public in reports and press releases because we think it is so important that consumers consider saferproducts.gov to be an important safety tool just as they do with a lock on a cabinet that it's incredibly important to share information and use the database as a resource. Thank you. I don't know if I can get this question in but Ms. Gardner you cite all the groups that are supporting TB117 you left out one group that does not and that's CPSC staff and one of the points that staff makes is it's difficult to move from the mock-ups of furniture to large scale real furniture and that seems to be in their view one of the defects of the safety standard. Do you have any comment at all about TB117 that would address staff's concern? Feel free to submit the comments. I have to admit that this isn't the freshest in my mind right now but I do recall two or so years ago commission staff issued a briefing paper that explained why they did not support TB117 2013 as a national standard and I think many groups pointed out that briefing paper had some serious errors in it and the folks at Bear Hefti, the agency in California that adopted and implements the California standard felt that it seriously misstated what was happening in California and I believe that as a result of that some conversations were instigated between CPSC staff and Bear Hefti staff and I have to admit that I don't I have lost track of where that ended up and you may know but I do think that the Bear Hefti staff really felt that the concern that CPSC staff flagged was not a genuine concern and they're the ones who are actually implementing it so I think it would be worth revisiting this question. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner Adler, Commissioner Robinson. Ms. Gardner I just want to follow up on what Commissioner Adler was saying because I certainly am one and I think I won't speak for anybody else but I was hoping that TB117 was the answer because it seemed like a pretty simple answer if it was appropriate but because our staff raised the objections that they did I think my recollection is that it had to do with test method and that the supporting data required under our act wasn't there but my recollection is exactly the same as yours that we got to a point where there were conversations and I don't know what happened after that so I think revisiting this and bringing up again is a great idea. Thank you and I will commit to checking in with Bear Hefti staff and seeing where we are and reporting to the commission and see if we can jumpstart this. Great, thank you so much and I just want to thank all the other panelists too for your presentations and for the efforts that you're making on behalf of consumer safety. A number of witnesses have talked about these dangerously unstable dressers millions and millions of them that are in our homes and I just wanted to address this hidden hazard that exists in so many homes that's lurking there just and the statistics on the numbers of children that are killed and injured from these dressers is absolutely outrageous and I agree with those who think that we should be doing more as I prepare to leave I confess that one of my biggest disappointments is that I have not been able to do more this has been a big focus of my office and trying to force industry to eliminate this hidden hazard this should not be up to parents to find out about it and to anchor the furniture it should be up to industry to make furniture that's stable and safe and I fear that whatever progress we were making with a lot of effort from my office is now being undone and we are not being aggressive about it and I encourage you to continue to really really press the CPSC to get aggressive about getting stable furniture and I let me just start by saying I worked very hard on the anchor at campaign but I am absolutely convinced that that is not the solution for a number of reasons Ms. Weintraub you pointed out a number of those but you start with this is such a hidden hazard I mean people just don't know about it as Ms. McGee has told us as somebody who is so educated listens to the news people just don't know about it and even if they do know about it there are so many reasons they can't do it as you pointed out that some people can't put holes in their walls there are cement walls and so forth and I would add to what you said that anchoring is not easy to do you got to find a wall stud there are an awful lot of people in this room if they were honest don't know how to find a wall stud and you also have to have tools that many people don't have and I have to say as somebody who has looked at our investigations even when the furniture is anchored it frequently will cause an injury or death because the child will step on the drawer and the anchor will pull out of the wall because it's either not properly put in or for whatever reason it says it's pulled out of the back of the furniture so it's simply not the answer and I am quite appalled that that seems to be the only communication coming out of my agency right now is that anchor it anchor it anchor it and I just don't think it's the answer and with respect to our recalls I have to say that for many years and I was appalled to find this out back in 2015 that for many years all we required of the manufacturers of furniture was that they offer people free anchoring devices and we didn't require refunds we didn't require a large and effective communication strategy we didn't require an offer to have a professional come in and anchor it if you wanted to keep the dresser and no commitment by the manufacturer interestingly enough that going forward they would manufacture furniture that met some minimum standard so my office put in a huge effort to try to change that and I have to be honest with you Ms. McGee it was the it was your son's incredibly tragic death that was the turning point we finally started focusing on we have to start getting industry to do more I remember vividly the moment I heard about this tragic death our compliance staff started doing what we should do we started examining different manufacturers dressers to see if they met stability standards and if not we were recalling the furniture and we developed a template which was terrific of the requirements for those recalls and we weren't we weren't willing at that point to say there are lots of old dressers out there and focus on the just the anchor it campaign but we were trying to get them out of people's homes and we had the template full refund we'll send a professional in and going forward to manufacture compliant dressers but all of that has changed in the last year and in the past year we've seen that CPSC has retreated from this strong pro safety approach of recalls of unstable furniture I can tell you that a number of companies that I thought recalls were going through have simply disappeared from the report we've stopped the number of recalls being processed of those recalls we've done we've gone back to the cheap anchoring kit without the requirements that we had in our previous template for manufacturers and it just when you look at and I have to say also that even the recalls that we did before the change of leadership I'm very disappointed in the follow up and the pushing we're doing with those companies to make sure they're doing all they can do to get those dressers out of people's homes they're just they know they don't have to and CPSC is not going to force them to so they're not doing it so I very very very strongly believe this should not be on the parents that we've got to make the furniture companies do something and I'd like to say that as much as we have made some movement toward a mandatory standard it became clear to me during my time as a commissioner in the last five years that the mandatory standard probably wasn't going to happen on my watch so we've really focused on trying to do something about the voluntary standard and to say that it's been disheartening would be a gross understatement even with the welcome new leadership Rick Rosati's been doing a great job from BV but there's such pushback from industry because it's more expensive to make dressers that are stable and our staff engineers concluded long ago that the standard now is not adequate it's very simply you have to be able to pull out all the drawers and the dresser won't fall over or pull out each one individually and put a 50 pound weight on it and boy do they put that on gently not the way that any child is going to step on the drawer of a dresser and our staff has been pushing very very hard for let's increase the weight because kids are bigger now and let's replicate real life situations where we've got clothes in the drawers and the weight goes on the way a child is really going to step on a drawer but that has just not happened and I will just tell you one thing that really really ripped me apart in terms of what industry is doing to play games with this standard they have recently added outstops to drawers now what the heck that is I don't know I mean we all pull out drawers we put our things in take things out and put it back but they've added outstops from what I can see for the sole purpose of the weight with the drawer not pulled all the way out so that's a kind of gaming of the system that we're seeing and we also have as we know from numerous reports from CPSC thank you consumer reports thank you kids in danger and UL also for doing these studies of what kind of compliance we have and we just have really low compliance we have really dangerous dressers out there and I just have to I admire CPSC staff they've just been amazing about being patient and trying to get in industry to do something but I just have to say in terms of the hope for the future there are two things that I'd say someday we're going to have future leadership that's going to go back to trying to really make industry make these dressers safer but we also have the sturdy act that's sitting there I don't know if it's going to get through in this congress maybe there will be a change in the congress come November but the sturdy act basically was the CPSC standards Casey Klobuchar and Blumenthal and representatives Shikowsky supported an act that would basically lift the requirements on the CPSC for a mandatory standard that are in place now and make it more like a 104 so we should be able to to pass that rule so I'm I still I'm one of those always looking for a reason to be optimistic and so I'm hoping that we're going to see some action on that I have 48 seconds left so let me just say that I hope to address with the next panel the concerns that have been raised by many people about 6B and I hope to do it in a way that's not as repetitive as all of us have been about the onerous requirements by congress but then we've added to it by our regulations and it's being interpreted in a way that's way too restrictive particularly when it comes to the consumer groups and the the groups that you represent adding information out of the agency which under the freedom of information act you have every right to and the idea that you should get reports that are heavily redacted information that is not proprietary is pretty outrageous and so I will finish that up on the next panel thank you again so much thank you excuse me thank you commissioner k thank you madam chair Miss Gardner I'll start with you I want to just follow up my understanding of the conversations between the CPSC staff is that unfortunately I don't think that they ended up in agreement across the board on those technical issues and the challenges that we face just as you reported that the bear hefty folks looked at the CPSC report and found that it was technically lacking in some areas it was the same with CPSC staff looking at the bear hefty work and finding that it was technically lacking in some areas and we're in a tough spot because we're not fire scientists as far as I'm aware and so when a CPSC staffer says I've been spending 17 years studying charlains and I can tell you bear hefty did not apply the proper methodology that's a very difficult thing to disregard and that's the fire hazard obviously and we take the fire hazard seriously and so I think all of us up here have wanted to find a resolution to that issue but if there is if there's some way that more technical discussions can occur if there's some way there's some way to break that tie I think we're all open to it I do think that it's also complicated by the fact that what we often don't talk about is the second half of what California did was that they want to study large open flame and whether or not they need to make further changes and so I'm not aware of why there's an urgency to the commission to lock in TB 117 right now because I think that California already by its action made the changes and you're saying 25% don't comply and that's obviously an issue and that may not change if CPSC made it a national standard because it sounds like what's being sold in California one fourth is violative that's a California issue but my larger point is that if we're going to go in the direction of adopting this in California ends up modifying it based on its open flame study I don't know how we've achieved anything I think what we want to try to do or at least I would like to see happen is that these issues get put to bed for good both on the fire hazard side and on the chemical exposure side but if there's anything else you want to add please go ahead thank you yes and I I really appreciate all four of your openness to trying to get to the bottom of this and which obviously we share and I think this is encouraging me to go back to this and try to see if we can get to the bottom of this in terms of what violates doesn't violate California standards I think the key is that the flammability there's a the flammability standard as far as I understand is being I have no evidence that people aren't complying with the smolder standard but one can comply with the smolder standard and in addition add toxic flame retardants even though those flame retardants aren't needed to comply with the standard and I think that's why our petition the organic halogen petition is so important because because there's nothing that prohibits the use of flame retardants it's just that they're not required any longer right California and so that it sounds like that would not get addressed if CPSC adopted as a national standard TB 117 the point that you just raised that's right and that's why our petition is so is so critical but if there were a national standard it would mean that no other state could adopt for example the old version of the California standard that essentially mandated which I'm not aware anyone's actually stampeding to do that are you there are there were bills introduced this year in Hawaii and New Jersey at a minimum I don't believe that they're moving but there are always efforts that you know we believe are being pushed by the chemical industry at this at the state level okay thank you for that Miss Cleary I wanted to follow up on the topic that Mr. Adler had where Commissioner Adler had raised there is a precedent obviously at the commission in the last few years about trying to provide relief on GCC's in the event that there's no safety issue and so certainly willing to continue to explore that issue with you I know you guys were in recently and we didn't really talk about this topic but certainly if you guys want to set up something with my office happy to look at that and I think that for us we're going to want to just have you know absolute certainty that it wouldn't raise any safety concerns that I think that as Commissioner Mohorovic had demonstrated and what he had done with GCC's that he found an area where it truly was unnecessary everyone agreed across the board and so if that can be a similar situation we're certainly open to working with you on that thank you the only other question I had that related to it is do you have any sense as to what percentage of refrigerators the United States are sold by AHAM members meaning are there folks outside of the scope of AHAM membership that are selling refrigerators in the US there may be a few but not many okay great thank you Dr. Denny thank you again for coming back I wanted to ask an express appreciation for the window blind cord work that AAP had done I was curious to know why a study on that like what led to that and why is AAP working on that particular issue so thank you for the question Commissioner the AAP did not conduct the study it was conducted by Dr. Gary Smith at the Center for Injury Research and Policy I'm sure you're familiar with his injury work it why he chose that particular topic I'm unclear the reason why we again I know we bring this up in our testimony each year we bring it up is because it does continue to be an issue and we want it to continue to be one of the priorities you know we did see that movement related to the stock blinds but do think that it should be applied across the board to all blinds and thank you for that clarification that Gary had done the work and that AAP had just published it the reason I ask about it is that my good friend to my immediate left has accused me in the past of working on that issue not for data driven reasons but for political or emotional reasons is AAP is this a political or emotional issue for AAP is that why AAP has taken it up or do you feel that there is a legitimate child safety data driven reason for this to be a hazard addressed as a priority thanks for the question the really great thing about being a pediatrician is it's not politics at all it's all about the health and safety of kids and all the issues that we bring to the table related to injury are very data driven great so you do feel there's a solid data foundation for this issue to be a hazard priority for the commission correct and Ms. Kern I know that we've been overwhelming you with our questions but I was curious to know if you can give me a sense I know that the staff had looked at some of the information that you had provided on the Spandex testing has there been an ongoing dialogue because the last of that it's been a while but the last that I heard from staff was I think that they may have been would have been able to benefit from additional data can you give me a sense of where that is please this is a priority for us and for our members in the industry and so we just want to continue to flag that as far as where the process stands the ball is in our court right now so we do intend to follow up with you in the near future to continue that dialogue great and obviously if my office can be helpful in any way as I'm sure all the offices would you know please let us know because it's certainly something that we're happy to stay interested in thank you and then finally Ms. Wynne-Trabbe and everybody in lunch but I'll keep it brief you've obviously been an observer of the commission for a long time and have seen the commission go through many different waves and different philosophies for addressing consumer safety from your perspective do you feel like the commission can achieve its mission effectively by categorically downplaying or ruling out using any of its tools I think that the commission is the most effective and historically I think it's proven that the agency is the most effective when it uses all of its tools obviously in combination depending on the specific circumstance but the CPSC has numerous tools that Congress gave it and those tools make products safer for consumers create an equal playing field for manufacturers who comply with the law and make clear how incredibly important CPSC's laws are and so do you it sounds like what you're encouraging the commission to do is to make sure that we continue to robustly use all the tools that are available to us and not to predetermine that we're just not comfortable using certain tools and so therefore we're just not going to use them correct I think it's very important for the agency to be legally driven and data driven looking at the particular circumstance whether a particular usually there's a voluntary temporary fix first whether that's working looking at its statutory authority what it's capable of doing legally and if it is you know legally able to take particular action which usually it is then take action to more effectively eliminate if possible minimize in some circumstances if elimination isn't possible the particular hazard great and the last topic that might circle back as well to Dr. Denny is laundry packets which the chairman raised I think at the time of the publication of the standard you and I may have been the two people who were most skeptical hopeful but skeptical that this is going to work and it has been very disheartening to hear about how long it's taken to get to the point where people don't even agree on the proper methodology for data collection I was very grateful Dr. Denny for your answer to the chairman's question for the chairman for asking that but how do we move forward I mean it sounds like there's only a certain subset of legitimate method methodological ways to address whether this is being effective and you're suggesting it sounds like that some of the folks are offering suggestions for areas that are outside of that proper way of measuring it how do we get past this and actually because that was really supposed to be just the first step we weren't supposed to be bogged down this long in this question so what do we need to do to move past this and make sure that we're doing the proper methodology and does because this started sorry if you can just know me for one more second because this started as a chairman's effort by my predecessor chairman Tenenbaum I think there's a precedent for a chairman's office at CPSC to continue to play a leadership role can the chairman get involved and step in and say look we need to get moving and pick legitimate methodological approaches and get this thing moving is there more that can be done I would say yes there is and the role of the agency is entirely critical I honestly think that the standard was as effective as it was because of the role that the CPSC played and I think that has to continue I think one potential solution is and this seems to be where we're going is sort of agreeing to disagree about what the exact methodology is putting all of the potential methodologies out there both the public health preferred as well as what a number in industry have preferred but really to get the data out there in the most transparent way possible and evaluate all data sets and move forward because it's incredibly important to make sure that you know ultimately we want the data to be decreasing ultimately we want there to be fewer incidents of course even though we may have been skeptical ideally we want these incidents to be decreasing so if this voluntary standard is working that's great but if it isn't we need to take stronger action we need to figure out why it isn't strengthen the standard or perhaps put for a mandatory standard that builds on the voluntary standard that we're working on thank you this concludes our second panel Ms. Weintraub, Ms. Kern Dr. Denny, Ms. Clary and Ms. Gartner thank you all very much for your time and attention this morning at this point we are going to adjourn for one hour for lunch and we will resume in one hour and I look forward to seeing you all back here thank you all very much