 Good morning, and welcome to this public meeting of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This morning, CPSC staff will be briefing the commission on draft notice of proposed rulemaking for magnets, draft rulemaking to establish a consumer product safety standard for magnets. But before we start the briefing, I wanted to note the last night the Senate confirmed a rich Trump could you serve as commissioner? I look forward to working with them, but I see it's bittersweet. As it means that Commissioner Adler's impressive 12 years as commissioner and acting chair is coming to a close. Bob, you've always been a non-relenting, she went around the landing commitment to consumer protection staff, the CPSC have greatly enjoyed my time as your colleague. And of course, until Rich is sworn in, you'll still be here. I look forward to your active participation in today's briefing and briefings coming up or other decisions that this is going to make while you remain a member of the commission. So thank you. And with that, turn to David. Yeah. Thanks so much, Alex. No, I appreciate it. And I just want to say, and I'll probably say it again, it's great to have you on board. Rich will be a superb commissioner. And I can't thank CPSC's wonderful staff enough. So thanks everybody. Thanks, Bob. Turning today's business, this is the first of four briefings on important rulemaking packages in the coming weeks. The draft rule on magnets was developed after years of work at the commission focused on preventing the devastating harm primarily to children and teens resulting from the ingestion of small powerful magnets. It's too many parents have learned these magnets can attach to one another or metals through connective tissue walls, ripping through internal organs or blocking digestive systems. Such events can cause long-term damage or even death. This draft rule brings together years of research and incident reports and an understanding of the market. Proposed performance requirements for certain magnet products under section seven and nine to consumer product safety act. If adopted, the public will have an opportunity to comment on the proposal. I know that we all have a lot of questions for staff, so we'll turn this over to them to brief us. Once we've completed, they've completed the briefing. Each commissioner will have 10 minutes to ask questions with staff with multiple rounds. All staff members will brief the commission. Stephen Herschani, engineering psychologist with the division of human factors directed for engineering sciences and project manager for magnets, Meredith Kelsch, attorney in the regulatory affairs division. Also in attendance are Mary Boyle, CPSC executive director, Pamela Stone, acting general counsel, and Abhi Mosheem, who is acting for Alberta Mills, our CPSC secretary. One final point before I turn this meeting over to staff, any questions to staff that address the agency's illegal authority should be withheld until closed executive session, which the commission will hold directly after this public briefing. Thanks to all. And I turn the gavel over to Mr. Herschani and Ms. Kelsch. Thank you. As our chair mentioned, I am Stephen Herschani and I am presenting today with Meredith Kelsch. We are honored to be here with you today. As stated, we are here to brief the commission on the draft notice of proposed rulemaking for hazardous magnet products. Just checking, you can hear me clearly, right? Great. Next slide, please. The draft proposed rule seeks to address effectively the internal interaction hazard associated with the ingestion of hazardous magnets. The presentation will begin with opening statements on the rulemaking process, after which we will present explanations of the following. The hazard and involved products, existing standards and prohibitions, staff's proposed rule for addressing the hazard, and staff's economic analysis of the hazard and the proposed rule. Next slide, please. Now I'm going to hand it over to Meredith. Good morning. As the chairman mentioned, I am Meredith Kelsch. I am an attorney with the Office of the General Counsel in the Regulatory Affairs Division. So I will be giving a brief overview of the statutory framework for issuing a standard under the Consumer Product Safety Act. This rulemaking falls under section 7 and 9 of the CPSA. Section 7 of the CPSA authorizes the commission to issue consumer product safety standard to consist of performance requirements or requirements regarding warnings or instructions. Any requirements must be reasonably necessary to prevent or reuse an unreasonable risk of injury associated with the product. Section 7 of the CPSA also specifies the consumer product safety standards must be issued in accordance with the requirements in section 9 of the statute. Slide 4, please. Section 9 of the CPSA provides procedural and substantive requirements for issuing a consumer product safety standard. It specifies that a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPR, must include the text of the proposed rule, alternatives to the proposed rule, and a preliminary regulatory analysis. It also requires that the commission make certain findings before issuing final rules. In addition, the commission must provide two opportunities for comment. First, section 9 requires that rulemaking be in accordance with section 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to give notice of a proposed rule and the opportunity to submit written comments on it. Second, section 9 requires the commission to provide an opportunity for interested parties to make oral presentations of data views and arguments. Slide 5, please. As I mentioned, one required component of an NPR is a preliminary regulatory analysis. Section 9 of the CPSA provides specific elements that must be included in the preliminary regulatory analysis. It must discuss potential benefits and costs of the rule and who is likely to receive and bear them, reasons the standard submitted to the commission was not published as part of the proposed rule, and alternatives to the proposed rule, their potential costs and benefits, and reasons they were not chosen. In addition to supporting the preliminary regulatory analysis, information about costs and benefits associated with the rule also helps form the basis for several of the required findings for a final rule. Slide 6, please. As I mentioned, to issue a final rule, the commission must consider and make specific findings, and those findings must be included in the rule. Though the commission does not have to make these findings at the NPR stage, preliminary findings are included in an NPR because section 9 requires that the findings be included in the regulatory text, which must be provided in an NPR, and because this provides an opportunity for interested parties to comment on the findings. This slide shows 8 of the 9 required findings. Slide 7, please. The final finding deals with voluntary standards. If a voluntary standard that addresses the risk of injury at issue has been adopted and implemented, the commission must find that either compliance with the voluntary standard is not likely to adequately reduce the risk of injury, or that there is not likely to be substantial compliance with it. I will now turn it over to Stephen who will provide further information about the briefing package and draft proposed rule. Thank you, Meredith. Next slide, please. Under the draft proposed rule, all loose or separable magnets and certain amusement and jewelry products must either be too large to fit entirely within CPSC's small part cylinder, or each magnet must have a magnetic flux index less than 50, as measured by the procedures described in the ASTM F963 toy standard. In the following slides, I will discuss the product scope, hazard, data, and specifics of the draft proposed rule, including staff's cost-benefit analysis. Staff is concerned in particular about certain magnet products intended for amusement and or jewelry, which are not already subject to the magnet's strength and size requirements in the toy standard. Most notably, this group of in-scope products includes magnet sets, which staff generally considers to be aggregations of separable magnetic objects that are marketed or commonly used as manipulative or construction items for entertainment, such as puzzle working, sculpture building, mental stimulation, or stress relief. These products often can often include hundreds to thousands of loose, hazardous magnets. The scope includes other magnet products intended for amusement, such as those marketed as adult or executive desk toys, as well as child and adult jewelry with separable magnets. Next slide, please. Regarding out-of-scope products, in addition to children's toys subject to the toy standard, other products considered out-of-scope include home and kitchen products, such as shower curtains and hardware, education and research products, such as science kits for schools and universities, provided that they are not also intended for amusement or jewelry. Our primary hazard of concern is the internal interaction hazard posed by magnets small enough to be swallowed and strong enough to interact internally through body tissue, such as the intestinal walls, and resist natural bodily forces to separate. Internal interaction of these hazardous magnets has led to intestinal twisting, perforations, and other injuries with corresponding acute and long-term adverse health consequences, including deaths. The internal interaction hazard posed by hazardous magnets has been well documented for more than a decade by CPSC, foreign regulators, medical associations, and consumer advocacy groups. Can you go back one slide? Thank you. Hazardous magnets involved in ingestion incidents had various compositions, shapes, and strengths. Through testing, staff found that ferrite rock-shaped magnets typically have a magnetic flex index upwards of 700. NIB 5-millimeter diameter magnets, such as included in most magnet sets, typically measure 300 to 400. Staff is continuing to investigate smaller-diameter NIB magnets, such as 2.5-millimeter spherical magnets found in some magnet sets. We found that 2.5-millimeter spherical magnets typically measured between about 27 and 74. Staff has reviewed reports for five deaths in the U.S. involving the ingestion of hazardous magnets, which occurred between November 2005 and January 2021. Staff also reviewed reports of two deaths abroad within this timeframe. Of the seven reported deaths, the most recent deaths specified a magnet set was involved, and four of the prior deaths involved uncertain products described consistent with magnet sets, such as a fidget toy building set with spherical magnets estimated to be 3 to 5 millimeters in diameter. Considering the CPSRMS data, which includes anecdotal reports of incidents CPSC receives, there were 284 CPSRMS reported magnet ingestion incidents from January 2010 through December 2020. Excluding incidents involving products identified by staff as subject to the toy standard and products not intended for amusement or jewelry, there were 257 incidents considered in scope. At least 124 incidents resulted in surgery, such as bowel resection, and at least 108 incidents involved internal interaction through body tissue. Based on the nice reported data, which include generalizable reports of injuries treated in U.S. emergency departments, staff estimates 23,700 emergency department-treated magnet ingestion cases from January 2010 through December 2020. Excluding known out-of-scope products, staff estimates 22,500 cases in scope within this period. Staff estimates 18,000 victims were treated and at least initially released, and 4,200 victims were hospitalized or transferred upon emergency department visit. It is important to consider that nice data typically include only brief emergency department intake reports. Victims presenting with magnet ingestion may initially be sent home to monitor for natural passage, so these injury estimates likely understate the number of severe cases. Furthermore, we excluded from the analysis cases that reported uncertain ingestion of magnets during the emergency department intake, and some portion of these cases may have been in scope. Considering also the CPSRMS reported data, which typically included more information about the product and incident, victims ranged from six months to 54 years of age. The majority of the victims were between five years and 16 years old, meaning ages above those intended to be protected by child-resistant packaging, and above the ages typically associated with ingesting inedible objects. Almost half of the victims were eight years or older, meaning ages that caregivers would expect to understand warnings and not expect to consume magnets. The majority of this CPSRMS reported incidents involved magnet sets and products identified or described as magnet toys or jewelry. For nice cases where product type was identified or described, similarly, magnet sets, magnet toys, and jewelry were the most common. However, the majority of the nice cases involved magnets from unidentified products. Based on numerous factors discussed hereafter, staff concluded it is likely that a substantial proportion of the magnet ingestion or magnets for which product identification lacks certainty involved amusement and jewelry products not subject to the toy standard. Where use of the magnets at the time of ingestion was reported, the majority of the victims were playing with the magnets or using them as jewelry. Use as jewelry was especially prevalent among older children and teens. Where specified, the majority of the reports indicated the magnets were ingested accidentally. Accidental ingestion is very concerning because caregivers, children, and teens are likely to find it difficult to anticipate and appreciate the likelihood of older children and teens accidentally ingesting multiple magnets or magnets and ferromagnetic objects. They may also misunderstand the severity of the hazard and progression of symptoms as magnet ingestion symptomatology is often delayed and misdiagnosed as unrelated illnesses. Victims typically found magnets loosen their environments or receive magnets loose from relatives and friends. For example, reports commonly describe students bringing sets of magnets to school and distributing the magnets among their peers. The since vacated 2014 rule on magnet sets extended to magnet sets the ASTM F963 magnet strength and size requirements. The nice CPSRMS and also poison control center data demonstrate that magnet ingestions drop significantly and substantially in the period that the rule was announced and in place and rose significantly and substantially in the years after the year it was vacated. As detailed in staff's NPR package, multiple studies have corroborated this analysis. Staff concludes that these trends likely demonstrate that the 2014 rule was effective that ingestion cases rose significantly in recent years because the rule was no longer in effect and that the majority of the magnet ingestions involved magnet sets. In the years 2006 through 2009, coinciding with the toy standards prohibition of hazardous magnets and magnetic components in children's toys CPSC announced more than a dozen recalls of children's toys due to this hazard. Since 2010, that is the past 11 and a half years there have been only two recalls of children's toys and the two magnets for violations of the magnet requirements in the toy standard. The substantial decline in recalls of children's toys suggests that children's toys now largely comply with the toy standard and rarely are involved in internal interaction incidents. It adds support for the identification and prohibition of hazardous magnets specified in the toy standard. It also adds support for staff's conclusion that the majority of magnet ingestion incidents since 2010 did not involve children's toys subject to the toy standard. There are four domestic standards pertaining to hazardous magnets and consumer products. One is the children's toy standard ASTM F963 which has been incorporated by reference into a mandatory standard. The remaining three are voluntary standards that reference F963. F963 prohibits loose or separable hazardous magnets and magnetic components to be used in toys intended for children under 14 years of age. An exemption is included for magnetic electrical experimental sets for children ages eight years of age and over. For F963, a hazardous magnet or magnetic component is one that both fits entirely within the small part cylinder and also has a magnetic flux index of 50 or greater. Two international standards EM71-1 and ISO 8124-1 are very similar to F963 including in the prohibition of hazardous magnets. The remaining three domestic standards are relevant to some of the subject products including children's jewelry adult jewelry and magnet sets not covered by the toy standard. However, these standards are too limited in product scope and rely too heavily on safety information. As staff is detailed in numerous briefing packages and other public forums, warnings and other methods of persuading consumers to avoid the hazard are inadequate measures for addressing this life-threatening hidden hazard. Staff is aware of dozens of incidents of magnet ingestion which involves products with clear warnings about the hazard and against use by children. For example, the briefing package identifies in particular 17 recent incidents from 2018 to mid-2021 which demonstrated the failure of clear and repeated warnings about the hazard and use by children and which had marketing only to adults. Similarly, staff has examined websites for numerous magnet products marketed only to adults which had many reviews indicating use by young children. Furthermore, magnet ingestions have continued an upward trend over the past years despite over a decade of CPSC informational campaigns and recalls and consumer awareness raising activities from numerous medical associations and consumer advocacy groups. Regulators in other countries including Canada Australia and New Zealand have prohibitions for magnets and children's toys similar to ACMF963 as well as general prohibitions for certain magnet products intended for amusement including magnet sets. Australia and New Zealand also include general prohibitions for certain magnetic jewelry products. I was informed by Health Canada staff that they would consider magnetic jewelry as well on a case-by-case basis. The European Commission also has prohibitions for magnets and children's toys similar to ACMF963. Member states generally apply the chosen story requirements to other magnet products that are likely used by children including magnet sets marketed for adult use. Staff recommends addressing the hazard through performance requirements for products with one or more magnets which are looser, separable and designed, marketed or intended to be used by consumers for entertainment, jewelry including children's jewelry, mental stimulation, stress relief or a combination of these amusement and jewelry purposes. The scope excludes children's toys which are already subject to the magnet requirements in F963. Based on this definition products intended only for education, research, home or kitchen uses would also fall outside the scope of the rule as long as they do not otherwise meet the criteria and the definition. Staff recommends that loose or separable magnets in these amusement and jewelry products comply with the magnet size and strength requirements established by ASTM F963. The limit to less than 50 will address the known hazardous magnet products on the market which typically are over 300. Furthermore, to comply with this rule manufacturers are likely to create magnets below this limit in order to account for manufacturing variants. In testing magnet sets staff has found magnets that measured within the acceptable range. As discussed in the draft NPR package staff recommends listening comments from the public such as whether safety information requirements are necessary for magnets with magnetic flex index under 50. Unit sales of the subject products are unknown but could range from about 250,000 to 1 million per year. Retail prices vary by type of product and number and size of magnets. Magnets that's commonly average about $20 per unit. Nearly all of the magnets subject to the proposed rule are imported from Chinese manufacturers. Most current manufacturers and importers sell through internet sites. Most are on large internet retailing platforms but a few sell on their own sites. US consumers can also order magnet products directly from sellers based in China. Based on CPSC's injury cost model estimates or ICM the total aggregate annual benefits of the draft proposed rule in terms of the reduced societal costs of ingestion injuries to children could be about 80 million to 95 million dollars annually assuming 500,000 units. The cost of the rule would predominantly consist of the following. Lost consumer surplus, lost producer surplus, certification costs potentially ranging from 10 million to 17.5 million annually. Thus although both the benefits and cost of the draft proposed rule are uncertain, staff's estimates suggest that the benefits of the draft proposed rule may exceed the costs. These estimates exclude the magnet ingestion cases with unidentified products. To the extent that the unidentified products were subject to the draft proposed rule, which staff assesses is likely, these estimates could understate substantially the potential benefits of the rule. Based on ICM estimates for unidentified magnet products involved in ingestion injuries, average annual societal costs of ingestion injuries totaled 151.8 million. The cost of a rule could be offset to some extent by manufacturers and importers switching to products that comply with the rule and fulfill the same or similar purposes or otherwise repurposing their facilities. However, staff is unable to quantify the magnitude of these potential offsets. As detailed in the draft NPR package, staff considered alternatives to the draft proposed rule including alternative performance requirements, requirements for packaging, warnings, diversive agents, a longer effective date and relying on ASTM activities. Staff does not recommend these alternatives because staff does not consider them adequate measures by which to address the serious and often misunderstood hazard. ASTM F3458, which is focused on non-children's toy magnet sets, does not currently include performance requirements limiting the capability of magnets to be swallowed and present the hazard. The STM SUP committee for the standard F1577 is planning to ballot magnet strength and size requirements consistent with F963. However, it is uncertain if and when this will succeed and to what extent the scope will be limited. All of the importers of magnet sets are small businesses and this is also likely true for manufacturers and importers of other subject magnet products such as jewelry with loose or separable magnets. The main impact on small businesses of the draft proposed rule would be the lost income and profits to firms that could not produce, import, and sell non-compliant products in the future. The draft proposed rule could have a significant adverse impact on a few small importers which are believed to receive nearly all of their revenues from sales of the subject magnet products. The draft proposed rule extends to certain amusement and jewelry products such as magnet sets, the magnet size, and strength requirements established by ASTM F963. The draft proposed rule, loose or separable magnets in these products must either be too large to be swallowed or weak enough that they are unlikely to pose risks of internal interaction injuries. The draft proposed rule is supported by the following factors among others. Magnet ingestion incident trends, known products involved in incidents, hazardous use patterns, CPSC recall activity, domestic and international standards and prohibitions, ASTM magnet subcommittee activity, human factors and medical literature, and input from medical associations and consumer advocacy groups. Through testing, staff found there are magnets that already comply with the draft proposed rule which are marketed for the same purposes. So we know that it is feasible to manufacture compliant magnets. And now we're going to present a video of one way to test the magnetic flux of a spherical magnet consistent with ASTM F963. This demonstration shows one method to calculate the magnet flux index consistent with ASTM F963. Cross-sectional area. To measure the cross-sectional area of the pole, calipers are used. The magnet is placed in between the jaws of the calipers and the calipers are closed onto the magnet, revealing the diameter. The cross-sectional area of a spherical magnet where the pole exists is a circle calculated by pi times the diameter squared divided by 4. Pole location. To locate the poles, a film can be used. Encased in this green film are millions of magnetic particles suspended in oil. The magnet attracts these tiny particles to the areas where the magnet is the strongest at its poles. The image created is identical to the magnetic field of the magnet. Flux density. Magnets contain two poles, a north pole and a south pole. The strength of the magnets are highest at these poles. The flux index is a rhetorical number that can represent the strength of the magnets. This number is dependent on the size and flux density of the magnets. The flux density is a value of the strength of the magnetic field. Visually, the more wavy the lines in the magnetic field as shown, the higher the strength. A gas meter is an instrument that measures the strength of the magnetic field or flux density. For any test equipment, they first must be zeroed. The probe is placed in a zeroing chamber and the instrumentation is then zeroed. The magnet is placed in putty to keep attention on the pole as shown. The probe is then placed on the pole's surface. Since the pole surface is small, the probe is moved along to make sure the peak or the highest value is captured. To calculate the flux index of the magnet, it's the square of the flux reading times the cross-sectional area of the pole. In this case, the flux density comes out to the reading as shown. For the magnet in this demonstration, the magnetic flux index is calculated as shown. Thank you for listening to the presentation. I'm going to leave now. Just kidding. Thank you very much to both of you for the excellent presentation. I appreciate it. At this point in time, we'll be turning to questions. I'll start and then we'll go in order of seniority to the commissioners. Again, thanks to both of you for going through that detailed presentation. The proposed rule covers magnet sets and jewelry, but it doesn't cover kitchen household magnets. It's wondering what the thinking was along those lines, given that some of those magnets can be small as well and potentially open to ingestion. Maybe I'll turn to you for that. She's welcome to if she wants, but you're asking why would we exclude potentially identical products and intended products go purposes, correct? Based on the current data, staff concludes that the hazard is less likely to occur with these products, which have functional utility different from amusement and jewelry, and which are therefore less likely to be acquired and used by children and teens for playing in jewelry. We include a detailed explanation in the draft MPR package and also recommends listening public comments on these exclusions. Thank you. Staff also cites data showing statistically significant decreases in harmful magnet injustice during the period of the original magnet rule as an effect and increases once it was overturned. Can you describe how the marketplace has changed in the years since the original rule was overturned and who's selling these magnets now and how is the marketplace operating? At the moment, I'd prefer to get back to you on that from my econ staff. However, yes, we observed a noticeable reduction in injuries during the vacated rule on magnet sets and after it, we noticed a massive surge in them particularly sales online from Chinese manufacturers and importers. We're noticing it's a lot more prevalent to have small powerful magnets and consumer products intended for entertainment and jewelry. Thank you. I'd like to get to my fellow commissioners so I'm going to hold any additional questions and turn to Commissioner Adler. You are muted. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, wonderful. First of all, Stephen and Meredith, thank you for a superb presentation. It's incredibly comprehensive and I loved the video and it reminded me I'm not an engineer so it's good to know that there are folks who have that kind of technical skill. I did want to start with a comment, not so much with the question and my comment goes to your slide 16 and also I looked at table four and page 25 and to me it says, it carries a couple of important messages. Message number one, safety standards really work. When we had the safety standard in effect, injuries fell by a dramatic amount and conclusion number two, decisions like the 10th Circuit have real life consequences. I'm quite certain that the judges on the 10th Circuit were sincere and thoughtful and handed down their decision. They strongly disagree with it still, but this shows a really tragic picture of what happened when the standard was invalidated by the most cautious estimate, the number of ingestions dropped by about a thousand and once the standard was invalidated, they jumped again. This has the effect now of sending thousands of consumers, mainly children to emergency departments because the standard was invalidated. I'm delighted to see that staff has worked to address the issues that the 10th Circuit raised and it's my profound hope that this time we will have a good standard that will stand the test of time. So just one or two quick questions. First of all, one of the things that's always struck me about magnet injuries and when I've talked to my friends who are gastroenterologists they've pointed out this is a terribly hidden hazard that when you take a child, especially one who's not really clear about what is bothering them to the emergency department, they don't necessarily find out quickly what the problem is. Can you describe in greater detail how it is that folks actually determine that a child has swallowed magnets? And I think Stephen that's directed to you but I realize you're not a doctor but based on the in-depth investigations you've read, how is it that these injuries are manifested and how likely is it when you bring a child in for it to be discovered? As you'd imagine it depends on a variety of circumstances. The best case scenario is that the caregivers are aware of the ingestion. In many cases they aren't. Many times they indicate they didn't even know where the magnets came from and when that happens then you have real problems because child shows up, they don't know what's wrong. The symptomatology is often delayed and misdiagnosed such as a stomach flu or virus and as my excellent Health Sciences staff discusses in the Health Sciences memorandum X-rays are not enough to identify a magnet as a magnet. They just identify that there's an object and that further delays proper treatment. It's one of the things that causes patients to be sent home prematurely. Another issue is even if the parents are aware that the child had access to magnets they may not have expected the child to swallow the magnets and they may not be familiar with the hazard. That's an excellent answer that was probably directed to the wrong person. I did want to make some sort of overall assessment of this PR and as I read the NPR it looks like we're taking F963 our toy standard and we are extending it to things not covered such as magnet sets, jewelry and non-children's toys. Implicit in that is the assumption that F963 the toy standard is a good standard. Are you confident based on the data that you've seen that F963 really has the test of time at least with respect to the requirements for magnets? Yes, based on the available evidence theory. Magnet strength requirements testing prohibition in F963 does appear to have been effective and as far as we have seen it is the best available option. We have it in our own law. It's used in international standards and prohibitions and we have found it to be effective thus far although we continue our research. If I recall correctly we are asking specific questions about that in the NPR which is full of inquiries to the public which I greatly appreciate. One of the other points that I would note is that nice in particular shows a large number of unidentified products and I would just say that as far as I'm concerned among the identified products there is substantial evidence that this is a serious hazard but you do some amazing analysis as far as I'm concerned to reach the conclusion that a large percentage of the unidentified products fit within the draft standard and could you briefly review what it is that led you to that conclusion? Sorry, one second. Just want to collect my thoughts. I'm sorry. I don't mean to ask cosmic questions but this is something that I thought the staff analysis was really quite sophisticated and so if you could just briefly hit the highlights why you think that the unidentified products typically would fit within the standard? We concluded that a substantial proportion of the magnet products with uncertain identification are products subject to the draft proposed rule based on our investigation of magnet ingestion trends relative to the vacated rule of magnet sets as you mentioned, known products involved in incidents particularly from the CPSR mess reports based on the product utility and behavioral patterns, cases relative to the CPSC recall activity, again international actions and input from consumer advocacy groups among other factors discussed in the draft NPR package including the poison control center and other studies. Yeah, thanks very much. I really appreciate it. I wasn't trying to ask stumper questions and you did a great job in responding. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Adler. Turning next to Commissioner Biacca for 10. Hi everyone. Thank you very much for the presentation. I actually do not have any questions. Thank you. It's a high compliment to the staff. Thank you. Turning to Commissioner Feldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Listen, I appreciate everybody's work on this matter. Many of my questions today relate to the legal discussions that will be held right after the briefing, but that said, given the issues surrounding the magnet ingestions that have been an issue now since at least the mid-2000s, I'm hopeful we can progress to a rule that will finally address the surrounding issues and keep American children safe. With that, I do have a few questions that I believe are appropriate for this open session and I'll start with you, Steven. On slide 17 you discussed that magnet children's toys are now largely comply with the standard and are not involved in internal interaction incidents, but given the ambiguity that arises out of the NICE data regarding this product type, how can we be certain? It seems to me that the NICE issue is an ongoing one and it's something that's a result of an error in the design of the reporting system or that the medical personnel aren't keeping the ingested magnets long enough for our investigators to determine the specifics about the type of magnets that are ingested. What are your thoughts on that? I agree. There is uncertainty built in and a lot of what we have is correlation rather than causation. However, it's taking all of the bits of data that we have and combining it together that led us to this conclusion. Again, it's our continued investigation of magnet ingestion trends relative to the vacated rule of magnet sets, known products involved in incidents, product utility and behavioral patterns, cases relative to the recall activity, international actions, and input from consumer advocacy groups and medical associations. So it sounds like there's some significant gaps in what we know and what you've done is to interpolate to have a more complete picture based on a series of assumptions based on the input that you just provided, yes? Steve, this is Dwayne Boniface, if I could help here a bit. One of the items that Steve talked through in the initial briefing is noting that despite significant compliance focus on toys and magnet toy products in particular over the last number of years, there have not been identified a large number of these products that have that failed the F963 standard. So I think that in combination with the statistically significant changes in the overall hazard patterns between the preceding our rule, during our rule, and after our rule was vacated leads staff to have confidence that it's really these products that are causing the hazards noted. The system is set up to help us provide that kind of statistical representation. It's a tremendous tool for us in that regard. As you note, it's not necessarily going to go down to the individual product. For example, manufacturer make and model because it's based on hospital emergency department records and the attending physician is more focused on providing the medical care than necessarily identifying which, you know, make model brand and so forth product. But it's out of the collection and the synthesis of all these different data streams as well as compliance in depth investigations and so forth as delineated in the staff briefing package that gives staff the confidence. That's helpful. Thank you, Dwayne. Given that staff is stated that the sellers are located overseas including in China and are selling these products directly to consumers, does staff have a sense of how many of these sales are likely to continue even if a rulemaking is concluded successfully? Again, assuming that a final rule is adopted and many sellers are overseas, is there a sense on what CPSC would do to restrict or eliminate these sales? Sorry, can you hear me? Dwayne has something you'd like to comment on this. We'll have to get back to you on this question. Okay, that's fair. Thank you. I want to be respectful of everybody's time and I do have some more questions so maybe we can get through them quickly. Can you speak a little bit to how the rule imposes the least burdensome requirements that prevent or adequately reduce the risk of injury? Could a voluntary standard here address these concerns equally as well? Is there an extent that a voluntary standard would be complied with and strong enough to mitigate the hazard? Yes, but we can't, I don't believe that we should rely on a standard such as F3458 because it's unknown if and when the revision will be published, nor to what extent the scope may be limited and with which it will be complied. I noticed that, sorry, Dwayne, go ahead. I don't think Steve's taking enough credit for all the great work that he's been doing with ASTM to try to get voluntary standards in place to address these hazards. Steve's been working over a number of years on this particular hazard pattern and in this product area and has been working to try to get effective standards in place. While there are some discussions about modifying the voluntary standards, we have a long history of inadequate voluntary standards outside of the F963. Certainly we'll continue to engage with ASTM and others to try to develop those effective standards, but at this stage we've not seen any that we feel are both effective and widely complied with. That's helpful, Dwayne. Again, thank you. I noticed and you stated now that children's toys and home and kitchen products and educational and research products are outside of the scope of the rule here. Can you speak a little bit about to what confidence you have that producers of these sets may not come back and market them, for instance, as science and educational products that are explicitly excluded here. What assurances can you give that we would have the ability to enforce against products that are essentially the same but just rebranded and marketed something slightly differently? That is certainly a concern that we considered and one of the reasons why we recommend soliciting from the public comments on the product scope, including intended uses. We would certainly analyze products on a case-by-case basis for reasonably foreseeable use, hazardous use, for sure, to get more detail than that I'll have to get back to you after. Okay. My last question. On slide 15, Stephen, you discussed more evidence leading staff that conclude that a substantial proportion of the incidents here involve products that are subject to the draft proposed rule. Can you go into a little bit more detail regarding this point? I'm very sorry, but can you repeat that? You discussed on slide 15 that there was more evidence that led to your conclusion that a substantial proportion of the incidents here involve products that are subject to the draft proposed rule. What other evidence were you looking at that led you to this conclusion? So I'll jump in to help because I think it's a continuation of the discussion we were having earlier in that we were, what we have seen particularly since our rule was vacated is, again, a statistically significant increase in the number of incidents with ingested magnet sets through the NICE system. And over that same time, despite a very concerted effort by the compliance team looking at toy magnets in particular, we've not seen a anywhere near that level of increase. So that's a big reason why we had the confidence there. I understand. Thanks. I'll reserve. I'm sorry, I can add to that as well. We list some of the key factors that help support that conclusion in the draft NPR. And like Dwayne mentioned, a lot of it is based on that trend data from when the magnet set rule was in effect and then later vacated. It's also based on developmental and behavioral factors in terms of what types of products are likely to be provided to or accessible to or appealing to children as well as of the products where we could identify the product involved in the ingestion incident. The vast majority of those in the identified category are in use with the jewelry products, nearly all of them. So that's another indication we use to conclude that of the unidentified products, that trend is likely also true. And then there are some additional factors that we lay out in the discussion of findings in the NPR that help Dwayne in favor of why staff considers it reasonable to conclude that for the unidentified product ingestion, they were very likely to look down on these kinds of jewelry products. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. I'll reserve my other questions for the executive session, but I want to thank everybody for the presentations today in the video which was great. Thank you, Mr. Philman. At this point in time, I want to thank all of us. Are there any further questions for the commissioners? We could do another round. I'm not hearing you at this point in time. Mr. Philman said he was going to save his questions for the executive session that's going to follow. So I'd like to thank the staff for this informative briefing and the commissioners for their active participation. Given the rise in injuries we've seen since the court vacated our prior rule, I hope we can move to schedule a decision on the proposed rule quickly. As I noted at the start of this briefing, we'll now take a short break, say five minutes, and then reconvene for a closed session. Thank you again to everybody. And with that, we are concluded. Thank you.