 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our annual public hearing on the CPSC's agenda and priorities. We are holding this morning's hearing, so interested stakeholders are able to inform the Commission about product safety issues they believe are deserving of attention during fiscal year 2014, which begins October 1, 2013, and fiscal year 2015, which begins October 1, 2014. This hearing is a great example of the agency's belief in and commitment to open and participatory government. Before I begin, I'd like to once again welcome our new commissioners, Marietta Robinson and Ann Marie Burkle. I'm so pleased that both of you were able to be a part of our play yards and bassinets briefing yesterday. This is another important hearing today, and I'm so pleased that the full commission is together and able to engage with our important stakeholders. We have eight panelists representing a wide array of stakeholders. In addition to the individuals providing oral testimony today, we also received three written submissions from interested stakeholders who are unable to attend today's hearing. I'd like to extend a special welcome to each of our presenters who are here to testify this morning. Our panelists will be heard in the following order. Nancy Coles, who will be representing Kids in Danger, Jennifer Cleary representing the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, Robin Grant representing the National Consumer Voice of Quality Long-Term Care, and Michael McDonald representing the American Apparel and Footwear Association. For our second panel, we will have Rachel Weintraub representing the Consumer Federation of America, Randall Hurtzel representing the Handmade Toy Alliance, Rebecca Mann representing the Toy Industry Association, and Amiga Dia representing Consumers Union. The panelists will be given 10 minutes for their presentations. Mr. Stevenson, the Commission's secretary, will provide an indication that there are five minutes remaining, two minutes remaining, and then when your time has expired. After each panel has completed their presentations, the commission will ask questions of the sitting panelists. After the commissioners have finished asking questions of the panel, a new panel will be seated. Now that we have the procedures set forth for this hearing, I believe we're ready to begin. So everyone who's going to be on our first panel, Nancy Coles, Jennifer Cleary, Robin Grant, and Michael McDonald, please come forward, and we have a name tag for each of you. And so Nancy Coles, won't you please begin. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I want to thank you for this opportunity to submit comments and testify on CPSC's agenda and priorities. I'd love to welcome the two new commissioners as well. I look forward to working with you as we go forward on children's product safety. These in danger is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting children by improving children's product safety. We were founded in 1998 by the parents of Danny Kaiser, whose name may be familiar with you from yesterday, and after he was killed in a recalled portable crib in his Chicago child care home. I've submitted our full comments in writing and just wanted to highlight some of the main points. The implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act remains a top priority for kids, and we hope for the CPSC. We applaud the commission on its commitment to the process thus far. Of particular interest to us is Section 104, or the Danny Kaiser Child Product Safety Notification Act, Danny's Law. This is really Danny's legacy. This section requires strong mandatory standards for durable infant and toddler products, a product registration system for those same products, and additional requirements applying to the use or sale of older, unsafe cribs. The process for setting mandatory standards as required in Danny's Law is paramount to children's safety. Parents have always assumed that if a product is on a store shelf, someone made sure it was safe. Now, that will be the reality for nursery products. To date, mandatory standards have been adopted for eight products. This has greatly increased parent and caregiver confidence in the products they buy to care for their infants and toddlers. The process is moving a little slower than the ambitious schedule set out by the law, leaving many products still without a mandatory standard. But we urge CPSC to continue their thorough and thoughtful work in this process, working with ASTM international subcommittees to produce strong standards as expeditiously as possible. CPSC should continue to prioritize their participation in ASTM so emerging hazards can be incorporated into the mandatory standards as needed. In addition, we would urge CPSC to continue to monitor product development to see if other new infant and toddler products should be added to the Section 104 standard setting process. Another part of Danny's Law requires manufacturers of durable infant and toddler products to include postage paid, registration cards, and provide a way to register those products online. This is a proven system to assure that as many users as possible of products are alerted in the event of a recall. We encourage CPSC to work both with consumer groups and industry to broaden the awareness of this program and highlight the online registration process. We believe the use of barcodes, QR codes, and other online programs would encourage more parents and caregivers to register products, making it more likely they will not use a recalled product inadvertently. Our founders, Danny's parents, believe that had a simple card been included in the packaging of the PlaySchool travel-like crib that killed their son, he might be alive today. Danny's Law also makes it illegal to sell or use in childcare a crib that doesn't meet the new mandatory standard. While this will dramatically reduce the number of unsafe cribs in use, it still leaves many, some recalled in consumers' homes. We ask CPSC to make three things in this area priority. New outreach to childcare facilities as well as licensing agencies to assure unsafe cribs are no longer used in our childcare homes and centers. Kid continues to get calls from childcare providers just now learning of the provisions or not understanding how to comply. We must all work together to provide information, support, and enforcement of this safety requirement. We ask that you continue to monitor the online sales of cribs. In preparation for this testimony, I searched online for just a minute in a few cities and found dozens of examples of unsafe cribs for sale. While the internet may seem too vast to police effectively, most of these are posting on just a few well-known sites that could be pressured to do a better job keeping deadly products off their sites. For instance, they could require a date of manufacture for any crib posting. That would give the information that we need to know if it meets the new standard or not. Some online sites including eBay are already doing this. We encourage the manufacturers that recalled dropside cribs during the period of time when over 12 million cribs were recalled and at that time provided only a method to immobilize the site, to switch now to a refund or at least a coupon for the portion of the cost of a new crib. This will encourage those with financial difficulties to stop using what we now know to be an unsafe crib and move their children to a safer alternative. Throughout the implementation of CPSI and D&E's law, CPSCA has been working hard to make sure that cribs, play yards, and bassinets are as safe as possible. Work is also underway for inclined sleep products and bedside sleepers. It appreciates the measured approach CPSC is taking to ensure each of these products is as safe as possible. Even non-sleep products such as swings and strollers are held to standards that attempt to address possible hazard if the child does fall asleep in them. But still on the market are myriad products intended for infant sleep that are held to no standards. We have seen the devastating result of that with the deaths in the nap nanny and the pee pod travel bed crib, which was later had to be recalled. These were taken off store shelves too late for the babies that died. But there are many other products still on the market. As we have said, parents assume, especially now that they've heard about the new standards and testing requirements, that any product on the shelves has been tested and is safe. That is still not the case. We urge you to actively work to assure standards for all products intended for infant sleep. That way, products that cannot be made safe can be removed from the market. We applaud CPSC's recent action to review the evidence of the dangers of crib bumper pads. These products have led to suffocation deaths of dozens of babies, including two families we work very closely with at Kids in Danger. These families wish that they had been aware of the risks that when they bought this unnecessary and deadly product. We ask CPSC to carefully review the evidence as well as the almost universal opinion of safety organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, and to move to remove bumper pads from cribs. In addition to the evidence of suffocation, CPSC should also consider the impact on the worldwide safe sleep message of a crib free from pillows, comforters, or other paddings. A parent is understandably less likely to take the message seriously when she sees stores filled with cribs lined with padded material. And finally, we ask CPSC to make recall effectiveness a priority. We mentioned earlier the importance of the product registration program for infant and toddler durable products. As stronger standards and testing lead to fewer recalls, more attention can be paid to removing recalled products from use. But with the results of recalls held in secret within your agency, we have no way of knowing if any recalls exceed the 10 to 30% average that we believe to be the case. Kids suggest that a publicly available annual report of recall effectiveness rates of each recall would go far to encourage manufacturers, retailers, and other stakeholders to work together to boost those numbers. As we are all aware, sometimes shining a little light on a problem helps to illuminate solutions that were overlooked in the dark. We have highlighted other issues in our written testimony and thank you again for the opportunity to provide comments. We look forward to working with you in addressing these concerns and anything else that may arise. Thank you. Ms. Cleary. I'd also like to thank the commission for the opportunity to speak today and to provide written suggestions on the commission's agenda and priorities. AHAM represents manufacturers of major portable and floor care appliances and suppliers to the industry. Our membership includes over 150 companies throughout the world. The home appliance industry through its products and innovation is essential to the US consumer lifestyle, health, safety, and convenience. AHAM is also a standards development organization accredited by ANSI. Our consumer safety education program has educated millions of consumers on ways to properly and safely use appliances such as portable heaters, clothes dryers, and cooking products. We also have submitted a written version of these remarks and so I will try to be brief and focused on the main points today. We appreciate the CPSC staff's participation in various voluntary standards activities, including those related to home appliances. We agree with the commission that such involvement is key to the commission's strategic objective, which is what our industry shares, to minimize hazardous defects early in the manufacturing process. We also understand that the commission's resources are limited and must be judiciously spent. Accordingly, we support and urge CPSC's continued involvement in specific UL and ANSI committees, which we've identified because of the likelihood for activity in the coming year. I'd like to just quickly list those, but they are listed in more detail in the written version of my statement. Electric ranges, which would include cook tops and range tipover, household clothes dryers, household electric portable heaters, dehumidifiers, electric fans, household dishwashers, gas ranges and gas clothes dryers, household microwave ovens, household countertop cooking appliances, and household clothes washers. In addition, we again respectfully request and strongly urge the CPSC to join and be an active member of the ULSTP 250 flammable refrigerant task group. AHEMS members produce a number of different products that use refrigerant gases to control temperature and in some cases for product insulation, foam blowing to increase energy efficiency. Most relevant today would be refrigerator freezers. Historically in the United States, these refrigerants have been fluorocarbon based compounds, which are non-flammable, non-toxic and energy efficient. But industry has shifted and continues to shift further toward low global warming potential alternatives to mitigate global climate change. One very low GWP alternative is isobutane, which is acknowledged to have flammable characteristics when used as a refrigerant. Products using hydrocarbon refrigerants such as isobutane have long been used in other parts of the world, but use has been limited in the US partly due to EPA's only recent approval of isobutane as an alternative for household refrigerant products. In addition, the president's recently announced climate action plan specifically mentions curbing emissions from hydrofluorocarbons and one alternative is isobutane. Based on these recent approvals, there is work underway to carefully review the safety issues with using more than the current 50 gram charge limit for flammable refrigerants in the UL250 task group. The goal is to ensure that environmental gains are not achieved at the expense of safety. The UL task group is evaluating whether to raise the charge size. For example, the international limit in an IEC standard is 150 grams. AHAM supports global harmonization that is consistent with safety, and we would love to have the CPSC's involvement in this discussion. In fact, we believe it's critically important to have safety regulators at the table. We recognize that CPSC cannot vote or chair committees, but any input that staff could contribute would be incredibly valuable. We also understand budgetary concerns, and that is why we are specifically here today asking that this activity be included in the commission's budget and priorities. Again, I think the commission for this opportunity to speak and provide comments today. Ms. Grant. Sorry about that. Chairman Tenenbaum, commissioners, I'm with the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, which we call Consumer Voice for short. We're a national nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of recipients of long-term care services, so individuals receiving care at home or in assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Our membership consists primarily of consumers of long-term care services, their families, long-term care ombudsmen, individual advocates and citizen advocacy groups. For more than 38 years, the Consumer Voice has promoted quality care and consumer protection through legislative reforms, policy advocacy, and consumer and public education. We very much appreciate the opportunity to comment this morning on CPSC's priorities for FY 2014 and 2015. For decades, Consumer Voice has been concerned about serious injuries and deaths from asphyxiation, entrapment, and falls caused by bedrails. Both adult portable bedrails and bedrails that are part of a bed system are routinely used based on a pervasive myth that they are a safe, benign, and effective means of fall prevention in the elderly. Many very well-meaning family members of frail elders believe that the so-called security of a bedrail will keep their loved ones safe. But data show otherwise. Thanks to a review done by CPSC released in October of 2012, we know that from January 2003 to September 2012, there were 155 fatalities from adult portable bedrails. And that from January 2003 to December 2011, there were almost 37,000 adult portable bedrail-related injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments. Statistics from the Food and Drug Administration are also alarming. Between 1985 and 2009, the FDA received reports of 803 patients caught, trapped, entangled, or strangled in bedrails that are considered to be medical devices. These included 480 deaths, 138 non-fatal injuries, and 185 near-misses due to staff intervention. While the Consumer Voice is deeply troubled by bedrails that are viewed as medical devices and that are often part of a bed system, we believe that CPSC should focus its attention on adult portable bedrails over the next two years. Our network is extremely concerned about the dangers of these bedrails. Here are just a few of the comments that we've received on this issue. It's bad enough that our older adults face rampant ageism in our culture. Shouldn't we do our best to protect them from products that have unfortunately been proven to cause harm? Please develop mandatory safety rules to prevent injuries and deaths due to use of bedrails. And this comment from a caregiver, the gentleman I care for has Parkinson's. He became entangled in the rails and could not call loud enough for help. Fortunately, I found him in time and before harm was done. But he's scared of them now. And one last comment. When I buy a product, I expect it's been manufactured and inspected for how it will be used. I depend on the safety of using it in the manner described. I do not expect to be injured if the directions of use are followed. We thank CPSC very much for its work over the past year to begin addressing this public safety hazard. The data provided in its October 2012 memorandum and the formation of the ASTM Committee on Voluntary Standards for Adult Portable Bedrails are very important first steps. We also greatly appreciate the documenting of the petition from the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Voice, Independent Advocate Gloria Black, and 60 other organizations, as well as the petition from public citizen. But we believe that more needs to be done to end tragedies that result from bedrails. The Consumer Voice calls on CPSC to adopt a multifaceted approach using the full range of options available to the commission. We therefore recommend that both the FY 2014 and 2015 CPSC operating plans include the following five priorities. First, rulemaking to either create a mandatory standard for adult portable bedrails that reduces the unreasonable risk of asphyxiation and entrapment and includes warning labels, or to ban adult portable bedrails if it's determined that no feasible standard would adequately protect the public from an unreasonable risk of injury. Second, continuation of support for, and if possible, expedition of the ASTM process to develop a voluntary standard that protects consumers. While we believe that mandatory standards are necessary, we feel that these dual tracks are very important. Third, public outreach to send a safety message to consumers about the possible dangers of bedrails. CPSC should use traditional media platforms such as print, radio, news releases and videos, social media like its on safety blog and Twitter handle, and other social media avenues such as YouTube and Flickr. Fourth, education about the possible risks associated with adult portable bedrails and steps consumers can take to reduce those risks. Specifically, consumer voice urges CPSC to A, create and disseminate an adult portable bedrail safety guide similar in concept to its safe nursery guide for children's products. And B, to develop an adult bedrail information center comparable to its crib safety information center, which has really helpful tips such as emphasizing the importance of proper assembly and checking for gaps. And lastly, recalls of any adult portable bedrail that poses an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death with a refund to consumers who purchased this product. Consumer products that are determined, that are advertised as safe, should not kill or injure people. Tragedy stemming from adult portable bedrails are likely to multiply as the population ages and more and more elderly receive care in their homes rather than in institutional settings. We applaud the forceful action that CPSC has taken on children's cribs and children's bedrails. The consumer voice calls on CPSC to now focus the same level of attention on protecting vulnerable frail adults from unsafe adult portable bedrails. Thank you again for the opportunity to comment. Thank you, Mr. McDonald. First, I would just like to echo my colleagues' gratitude for the ability to testify today. On behalf of AFA, the American Apparel and Footwear Association, we are the National Trade Association representing apparel, footwear, suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and service providers. Our members produce and sell products that touch every American, clothing and shoes. Our industry accounts for more than 4 million US jobs and more than 350 billion in annual retail sales. As many of you know, product safety is a top priority for AFA. With many of our members engaged in the production and sale of children's clothing and shoes, we are on the front lines of product safety. As our members who design and execute quality and compliance programs that stitch product safety into every garment and shoe we make, to support our members in this effort, AFA has taken the lead in educating our industry on the development, interpretation, and implementation of new product safety standards and regulations that were instituted under the CPSIA. AFA supports the CPSC mission to protect the public against unreasonable risk of injury from consumer products through consumer education, safety standards activities, regulations, and enforcement. AFA shares the commission's goal of improving product safety, particularly for our most vulnerable citizens, and we look forward to building upon our longstanding collaborative relationship with the commission in the coming years. The commission's strategic goals are very commendable in leadership and safety, commitment to prevention, rigorous hazard identification, decisive response, and raising awareness. All of these areas in which AFA supports the commission's mantle is because of the priority we place on product safety that we offer the following comments in response to the commission's agenda and priorities. Echoing comments we've made in previous statements, we believe there needs to be a stronger emphasis on cost-benefit analysis and rulemaking. Proper cost-benefit analysis is a powerful tool to assist the agency, the regulated community, and other product safety stakeholders. And focusing their energies on those rules and requirements that will have the greatest benefit for consumer safety and public health. Among other things, proper cost-benefit analysis directs scarce resources and targeted responses towards addressing the greatest risks and hazards. These are traditional areas of strength for the CPSC. As we've discussed in previous hearings, cost-benefit analysis was identified as a good hallmark of regulatory government by President Obama in the executive order 1357-9, which states to the extent permitted by law such decisions should be made only after consideration of their costs and benefits, both quantitative and qualitative. Although we understand there are some concerns about the use of cost-benefit analysis and that it could lead to paralysis by analysis, we don't believe that this tool, if properly used, leads to this result. In contrast, cost-benefit analysis imposes important process disciplines that maximize the effectiveness of the final rules by making them more easily understood by the regulated community and enforceable by the CPSC. With the proposed rule to 16 CFR 1110 on certificates of compliance out for public comment, the commission stands to issue a sweeping rule that affects the regulated community. This is particularly troubling for the apparel and forward industry that has, according to CPSC's analysis, already incurred almost 1.4 million estimated burden hours annually, which amounts to $51 million in estimated economic cost. That is just under half of the total estimated cost of the entire certification rule opposed on all industries. 16 CFR 1110, if implemented as proposed, would contradict guidance and remove the much needed flexibility that the commission itself has previously issued in both its statement of policy on testing and certification of lead content in children's products and statement of policy and testing of component parts with respect to section 108 of the CPSIA. In doing this, we believe the commission is adding an increased paperwork cost that we believe has zero added benefit. The commission has already issued a determination stating that there is no lead in fabric. Therefore, having to certify what is already known is an unnecessary and unbeneficial expenditure. Second, we are just shy of the second anniversary of the act of public law 112-28, which provided the CPSC with greater authority and discretion in enforcing consumer product safety laws. It also set new mandates and requirements that the commission must fill, among which requires the CPSC to look at ways to reduce the cost of third-party testing burdens. In accordance with public law 112-28, the CPSC has issued a request for comments seeking suggested ways to reduce the burden of third-party testing and has provided several of its own suggestions and staff recommendations. While there is bipartisan support for the underlying CPSIA, there was also equally strong bipartisan understanding that it created an unobtainable regulatory situation by imposing tight deadlines on the CPSC and impossible or excessively costly requirements on the regulated community. 112-28 was an effort to rebalance the equation. But in order for it to have its full positive impact that Congress intended, we need the agency to identify and implement measures that can reduce testing burdens. AFA appreciates the work that the commission has already done in collecting suggestions and reviewing them, including its recent request for information on four individual suggestions. But as far as tangible burden reduction that has been made, we are quite frankly disappointed in the progress that has been made. And we adamantly believe that the four targeted areas included in the ROF must not be the only items that get attention in the coming years. AFA proposed a fulsome list of recommendations having been encouraged to do so by CPSC staff. And only one of those recommendations, the use of third-party XRF testing, which was part of a separate and ongoing rulemaking, has so far been adopted in part. Most have seen no action and in some areas the CPSC appears to be moving in the opposite direction by proposing new burdens and costs. Finally, the commission must make sure that the existing standards, like falls covering children's sleepwear, are properly and fairly enforced. We have brought this issue up repeatedly in the past, as current commissioners can attest to and the new commissioners are sure to find out. And we're pleased with the progress that has been made in the past few years. But many of the areas we've identified remain. Uneven enforcement undermines the effectiveness of well-developed product regulations. In the case of children's sleepwear, we have provided the commission with examples of non-compliant children's sleepwear that remains on the market and continues to be sold year after year. While we understand that the commission cannot publicly discuss enforcement actions, nor would we want them to do so, we believe it can explain why apparent non-compliant products are still allowed to be marketed and sold. The presence of non-compliant products raises fundamental safety issues and creates unfair competitive advantages. It's for this reason that we strongly encourage the CPSC to look at its policies regarding industry communications. AFA would like to be a helpful partner with the CPSC endeavors, but in order for us to avoid being solely a hindrance on CPSC's professional staff in the textile areas, we must know the process that the CPSC takes when it comes to finding and handling sleeper violations. Armed with the greater knowledge of the process, AFA and our entire industry can and is more than willing to do everything in its power to help relieve the burden on CPSC staff and ensure that only safe sleepwear is worn by America's children. We acknowledge the hard work CPSC staff does and we're encouraged by the recent sleepwear recall announcements, but we strongly encourage the commission to continue to fully investigate all reports of non-compliant sleepwear to ensure that this standard is properly followed throughout the entire industry. In conclusion, let me reinforce how delighted we are to have such a positive relationship with the commission. I recognize that some of my comments today may have come off strong, but that is only because AFA feels that we have such an open and honest relationship with the commission and we are encouraged to be honest and to pull no punches. We truly believe the commission strives to accomplish its goals of leadership and safety, commitment to prevention, rigorous hazard identification, decisive response and raising awareness. And we also know that AFA has been on the forefront of supporting these goals and increasing dedication to product safety not only in our industry alone, but in all consumer product industries around the world. And we look forward to continuing to strengthen our partnership for the benefit of consumer product safety and public health. And on a final personal note, I wanted to absolutely thank Commissioner Norr, Chairman Tenenbaum and Commissioner Adler for their service, their dedication, their open door policy and their active involvement in the industry. Commissioner Norr, Chairman Tenenbaum, you will be sorely missed by the entire industry when your tenure comes to an end, but we take great comfort in knowing that Commissioner Adler will be there to help guide our new commissioners who we absolutely look forward to working with as well. So thank you and I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much for coming and presenting to us. And now each commissioner will have up to 10 minutes to ask you questions and then we'll move on to the next panel unless commissioners want to go another round. But I wanna talk to you, Mr. McDonald first and about the cost-benefit analysis. When under section nine of the CPSC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is required to do cost-benefit analysis before we write a rule. And to give an overview for the public who's listening, 99.9% of all rules governing consumer products are voluntary standards. So we have to do a cost-benefit analysis. I think Commissioner Adler looked this up and there were nine rules in 30 years that the commission, 32 years, I'm sorry I stole your line, your research, but that's the benefit of being chairman, you go first. And anyway, nine rules in 32 years that we had promulgated from this commission because of cost-benefit analysis. So when Congress was looking at all of the problems with children's products like Ms. Cole's brought up, the 104 rules, lead in children's toys, phthalates, the Congress directed us to go under the Administrative Procedures Act and gave us deadlines for promulgating rules and did not require us to do cost-benefit analysis. Now when President Obama issued the executive order 13579, it said to the extent permitted by law. And I have talked extensively to Office of Management and Budget. Commissioner Nord and I have written competing letters back to them. And the exception to this, first of all, we're an independent agency, so this is a guideline, it's not mandatory. But I tried to in earnest support all the executive orders that come out of the White House, but it says to the extent permitted by law. And Commissioner Nord is going to argue the contrary when she has her turn, but we are not required to do cost-benefit analysis. We're required to stick to the guidelines and the timeframes and the CPSIA that Congress mandated to do the rules under the CPSIA and the rule that you reference CFR 1110 is an example. So I wanna clarify for that, I'm not against cost-benefit analysis, in fact, we're working on several rules now that we worked on for years that require cost-benefit analysis and we do it. And we've not tried to circumvent that requirement. But when it comes to the rules on the CPSIA on testing and certification, they're under a different statutory scheme if you wanna comment on that. I mean, I absolutely understand what the CPSIA implemented in terms of restricting cost-benefit analysis and what the old requirement for cost-benefit analysis is. We're not asking for you to have paralysis by analysis when it comes to cost-benefit analysis. We know that you are looking to implement these standards in a way that's helpful and a way that's quickly and efficient. What our concern is, in some of these rules, we're finding that there are increased costs with no benefit. And so even the act of doing cost-benefit analysis can discover those. And we also wanna strongly encourage the commission to take action when you do find these issues where there is an incurred cost with no benefit. And that's the example that I specifically brought up in CFR 1110. Well, if you would give us examples where you don't think it's a benefit. But when Congress acts, they did almost unanimously in the CPSIA and then public law 112, 28, Congress passed both of those almost unanimously in the Senate. I think it was unanimous. And the House, very few people voted against it. And they reaffirmed it twice. This is what they want. They want these rules done in an Administrative Procedures Act. They want them done timely and they want them done as quickly as possible. So I'll have to just agree with that. If you can show something with absolutely no benefit, please point it out to us. But we go through lengthy rulemaking. We have notice and comment and that really is the time. But I've spoken to Office of Management and Budget. There is no clear rule for us to follow the executive order and we really have to follow the law under CPSIA and PL 1112, 28. So thank you. And Ms. Coles, I appreciate all the work that we've done together over the past four years and working with Danny's parents, Linda and Boaz. They have just exemplary. We appreciate all the work that you all have helped us in in terms of the 104 rules. It concerns us too that there are non-compliant products on the internet just as non-compliant sleepwear will go. We'll find the person on the internet will go to investigate, particularly with the sleepwear and they will have gone out of business. So we're always glad to get trade complaints from your organization. And if you could tell us forward to us when you see anything on the internet on the cribs, we've worked carefully with all the states. Every state has a childcare licensing agency and we work very closely with them to get the word out so that in part of licensing these facilities, they'll check to see if there are cribs or any nursery equipment that has been recalled that's still there. So we always pick up the phone and call the attorney general or the state or the agency and we've done a lot of work but there's still more to be done because there were just so many cribs out there. And if you could tell us specifically, what was it that you found that was non-compliant? Was it drop sides? It was drop side and other cribs that were old, too old to still be sold. And the interesting thing is I do, look on the internet often for these. This was on Craigslist. Usually when I go on Craigslist, I go on the Chicago site since that's where we are. Well, in Chicago, as you know, we have a very active attorney general on these issues. We're based there. The city is very involved in this issue. So I very rarely find any. So in preparation for this, I went to a few southern states, a few states where we had not had much contact and literally just dozens and dozens of cribs popped up. Again, this is on Craigslist. The difference was on eBay where for every crib sold, the seller took a picture of the tracking label so you could see that it was a compliant crib. And so something as simple as requiring that for crib sales. And again, it's very hard to go after individuals. Most of these individuals selling it, we know from when our attorney general contacts them, had no idea that they were breaking the law and doing so. So you really have to go with the major sites rather than individuals because it's just a constant new pool of people doing that. That is, and that's a good idea to ask them to provide the dates. And maybe something on there, if your crib was made before a certain date, it's non-compliant for the most part. Right, it could be simple instructions. We worked too with some new, there's a lot of new consignment areas just between France as a big nationwide consignment sale. Company, and they've been very active in making sure that their sales aren't including any non-compliant cribs. So there are definitely people out there who want to make sure that used products that aren't compliant. I did just want to, one thing that you just said about childcare, it is true that all the childcare facilities now cannot sell or cannot use cribs that don't meet current standards. There's no national requirement that recalled products not be used in childcare. The only states where that's true is where the legislation that Kids in Danger worked on, the Children's Product Safety Act, state by state, has that requirement. And a few other states who have adopted similar, but there is no requirement for childcare not to use recalled products, which seems kind of silly since we've taken the efforts of the government to determine them unsafe that we'd still allow them in childcare. And then my time's almost up, but I want to thank Robin. Thank Gloria back in your organization for being a part of the new ASTM processes working to establish safety standards for the bedrails. And I just want to remind the public who's watching and who's here today that a petition has been published in the federal register and Ms. Grant brought that up. And we're in the middle of an open comment period which ends August the 5th. So I encourage all interested stakeholders to provide us comments on bedrails. And Ms. Cleary, thank you. We've enjoyed working with Ahem as well. So this will probably be my last public meeting like this, but I just want to tell all of you what a pleasure it's been to work with you in such a very close professional basis. And I wish you and your organization's continued success in the future. Thank you. Commissioner Nord. Thank you so much, Madam Chairman. Since you did offer me an invitation to discuss God's benefit analysis, I don't want to let that opportunity pass by. And would merely say that there's really nothing in the CPSIA that prohibits this agency from doing cost-benefit analysis. It doesn't mandate it, but it does allow us to do it. The executive order talks about doing it to the extent permitted by law. So obviously we could do it in compliance with the executive order. And then finally, I think we need to remember, and this is a point that Mr. McDonald raised, that Congress was very concerned about the cost being imposed by the CPSIA, in particular the regulations that we issued with respect to testing and certification. Perhaps a more aggressive and vigorous and fulsome analysis of both the costs and the benefits and trying to look more aggressively at regulatory options might have given Congress more confidence that we were actually carrying out that mandate, but no doubt we will probably be discussing this more this morning. Mr. McDonald, recently I was out on the West Coast and met with two members of your association with the senior executives out there. And both of them had kind of a similar concern and that was that they have worked very hard, committed a lot of resources over the years to set up quality assurance programs. That, to their minds, were working very well. They've certainly had no issues with us, with state regulators or safety concerns coming into the companies. Yet they have been asked to either set aside what has been working well for them and impose a new regulatory system of testing, third-party testing and certification, or layer, in the other case layer it on top of what was always already been working, which means that they've had to take resources away from other QA, QC activities. And they complained bitterly about this and were very concerned about the fact that they were generating a lot of paper. They were creating administrative burden and it was sitting in a computer system. Nobody was looking at it. Now, I say that as a preference to my question. The CPSC has created an importer self-assessment program under which we take a very close look at companies that participate in that. And we assure ourselves that they do have quality assurance, quality control mechanisms in place. And once they have passed our test, if you will, then they get a buy on a closer examination at the ports. And it allows for your flow of trade and other benefits. I'm wondering if there's some way that we could take that same concept and apply it more generally. And is this something that you or your association has looked at, do you have any responses? Absolutely, thank you for the question. I absolutely agree that a lot of the concerns that we've been hearing recently have been on the paperwork burdens. A lot of the suggestions that we gave in the initial testing reduction burden search were for just reducing the paperwork burdens. They were not for any, in effect, on the testing or certification rules, but the reducing the paperwork. And so, for example, the Flamble Fabrics Act, not having to have a piece of paper saying that you don't have to test. But in terms of the self-assessment program, we absolutely believe that that is something that can and should be used more widely. I mean, the main goal for all of us here is to keep safe products off the shelves, keep safe products out of consumers' hands. So if you can certify that the programs are correct, the factories are correct, the products are being made correctly, then I think there is absolutely, and legally, a way that the CPSC can implement a stronger self-certification program and use that as a certification. All right, well, that might be interesting to explore as we go into the new fiscal year. Ms. Grant, you've raised very serious concerns about adult bedrails, and as you have looked at the use of this product in the marketplace, have you examined any of the benefits that bedrails also bring about? I mean, are there benefits? We do believe that under certain circumstances, there can be some benefits for certain populations. So for example, somebody who is alert and oriented and cognitively intact may be able to use a bedrail to help them move in bed, to reposition themselves, to help them sit up on the side of the bed, and to also go from sitting to standing. You know, we all come at these issues from our own personal experience, and my personal experience is that I had an elderly mother who did fall out of bed. She spent the last year of her life in a bed with bedrails. So I'm very concerned about the issues you've raised, but I also sit and think, well, for 364 days a year, somebody did not fall out of bed. The 365th day, there was a tragedy. We can count the tragedies. We don't count the accidents and the injuries that are prevented, and this is an issue I know that Bob cares very much about. And so it seems to me that we've got to make sure that we don't lose sight in seeking to regulate these products with the benefits that they do. And so I just put that out on the table, and hopefully we can have a more aggressive dialogue about how do we deal with the harm, which generally seems to fall to people who are less able to understand the risk without taking a useful product off the market. Now you had indicated that an educational program might be part of our strategy. I'm wondering what kinds of educational programs does your organization have in place, and is there some way we can support them or push your message out there a little bit more aggressively? That's an excellent point, and I do believe and do agree that this does call for very serious conversation, and I don't think it's one extreme or the other necessarily. In terms of education, we do have booklets, educational materials, written materials that talk about the risks of using bedrails, and we also have some information in there as well about alternatives, approaches that can be taken to avoid the use of restraints, well, bedrails being used as restraints. So we do have some materials that we offer, and we support individuals in our network in doing in-service trainings and presentations. Well, perhaps what we need to do as we think about our regulatory options is also think about our consumer education options. And the CPSC standing alone isn't gonna be able to do that, CDC, HHS, lots of other agencies, FDA can perhaps more effectively work with us to push a message out there on this. We would be delighted to be able to join forces. With respect to your testimony, Ms. Cleary, I was intrigued by the discussion of isobutane, and I'm wondering if you could just describe what is the stumbling block getting in the way to harmonization of the standards there between ISO and UL? I'm not sure if there's a stumbling block per se. I think we're just looking for the commission's involvement in the discussion. I think that there just need to be standards that show us how to properly use the material. And we just need to evaluate what that would mean for this country and this country's products. Okay, okay, thank you. And then finally, Ms. Culls, first of all, I was very intrigued by your comment that daycare centers are continuing to use recalled products. This morning isn't the place to debate whether the law should be changed in that regard, but it does seem as if more outreach to daycare centers either through the CPSC or other state licensing agencies is probably called for, if indeed that is what's happening in the marketplace. But your testimony has a pretty long list of things that you're asking the agency to do. Obviously resources here are limited and we have to prioritize. So of that long list, could you tell me what your number one priority would be? Sure, I'd be happy to do that. Most of my testimony is actually things you're already doing and me just saying they're great, please continue doing them. If I had to single out one thing at this point, given what's taken place with Danny's laws, it would be recall effectiveness. I think it's a much bigger problem than any of us can address on our own. We all know the problems with it and I just think we all need to focus on it because it's, again, with the cost-benefit analysis, it seems to all the cost and effort that goes into CPSC to recall a product, we should make sure that that actually means it's no longer being used. Thank you. Mr. Adder? Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I'm afraid your testimony is probably gonna trigger more commentary than questions on our part so you'll have to forgive us, but I thought all of the testimony was really superb. And I'm just gonna go down the line if I might and forgive me if I call Nancy a Nancy, but she's a friend. And I will say I just had dinner last week with Linda Ginzel and Bo Eskizer. He is one of the finest chefs I've ever run across. But it is also an example of parents turning a tragedy into something incredibly useful and productive without overdoing it. And I think partly it's because they're such wonderful people and you are such a wonderful person in what kid does. This monitoring of online sales of cribs, anytime I walk in and I'm just feeling too cheerful in the morning, I will go online and I will search the internet. And sometimes I just look for lawn darts, which have been banned forever, and I still find sales. And Mr. McDonald, sometimes when I really wanna get depressed, I look at sleepwear and I see, and that's just a massive problem. I did wanna say a word of defense for the staff because our compliance staff actually has people who are dedicated to monitoring these products online and they're getting constant input, which they greatly appreciate, not just from you, but from me. And it is a massive task and I can't tell you how much we appreciate it. We encourage you to keep submitting those comments. You do call for the statistics on recall effectiveness. I hadn't realized we didn't publish recall results, but I think it's probably because they dribble in over such a long period of time. It's hard to figure out a precise date when to do that, but if you wanna know, they're low. And they're low not just at this agency, they're low at every agency. They're low at FDA, they're low at NHTSA. And a lot of it depends on a multitude of factors and it's always seemed to me and one of the greatest things we could do would be to look for better technology for getting the word out. And I know I always bring chuckles when I say, someday I can envision a parent walking home and the crib says, hello, don't put precious in the crib today because I'm dangerous and I've just been recalled. But some kind of constant improvement in technology, it seems to me, has gotta be one of the greatest things that we can do. And so I'm wondering if you've heard of any new technology that would help us to do a better job in recall effectiveness. And I do agree with you, it's an incredibly important issue. Yeah, I think you can use technology at both ends. So I think, for instance, there's no reason that when I register for all my nursery products and people buy them for me that the store doesn't automatically register those products for you as their purchase so that some, at a point of purchase, a way to register products because really direct contact with the consumer is gonna be the best way for them to learn about the recall. On the other end, I know there's been a company for years and I don't have their name here, but who does use RFID chips where for a more expensive product like a crib or a car or something where you spend a lot of money on, you have one of these on, it may not tell you not to put precious in but it would at least beep, turn red and beep. Or send you an email. Yeah, send you an email. I mean, so for more expensive products, something like that might be useful. And then it's just continuing to figure out how to get the word out. But I still, and I can FOIA for the information on recalls so I do see it. But obviously parents aren't gonna do that and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of your staff time and it's not like it's a company secret. So you're spending time and money making me jump through all these hoops or making a consumer jump through all these hoops to get to information that it was just public. Again, I think we've all seen how sunshine works, right? I mean, I think that if companies had more of an incentive to make sure those numbers weren't so abysmal, they might think of creative ways on their own to raise those numbers. Thank you. Ms. Clary, I've been at the commission on and off for many years and when you're talking about the isobutane issues, I couldn't help myself, I flash back to when we took chlorofluorocarbons off the market, which were a great refrigerant and they were non-toxic and non-flammable. But the problem is solve one problem, create another. And so what we've done, I think, and it's a good thing that chlorofluorocarbons are not used as refrigerants, but now we've confronted the fact that these other products do have a flammability issue and I'll just tell you that to the extent I have any say on this, I would hope we would join with AHEM in working on voluntary standards. So I certainly appreciate your bringing this to our attention. If you have any comment, please feel free. Appreciate that very much. Thank you. Ms. Grant, sorry, I'm gonna do a micro rant about some of your testimony, which I thought was dead on. And as you know, I'm a huge fan of your organization and I'm a great admirer of yours and of Gloria Black for bringing this incredibly important issue to the front. That's part of a broader issue and I'm so glad that you commented about the problems of the elderly. This is a pet peeve of mine these days and I'm just gonna cite a couple of statistics. Seniors today make up about 13% of our population. And by the way, just to quick aside, we have more people age 65 and older than they have people in Canada. And it's a growing demographic. But here's what's so upsetting to me. Seniors constitute 13% of our population. They constitute 60% of the fatalities associated with consumer products. So just think about that and this is a demographic that is growing and growing. And it's not the case that we can do nothing. There are lots of things we can do for discrete products such as bedrails to work to solve this problem. And so it's something I would urge my new colleagues and I would urge all the members of the audience there to focus on because it is increasing in a very dramatic fashion. You did mention the call for a safe bed rail guide. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? What the child safe guide was that you were referencing? In a fairly cursory review, I must say of the CPSC website, I did find that there was a guide that was called a safe nursery guide. And that just made me think that there might be some comparable piece of consumer education that could be developed before any changes are made or standards. I mean, right now, something that could be put out there that talked about the product, how to use it as safely as possible, checking for gaps, that kind of thing, making sure that you properly assemble it. And alerting the public and the consumers to possible risks that are associated with. So it's just basic education. Thank you so much. And I did reflect on Commissioner Nord's comment about the benefits associated with bedrails. And I think in some cases, there are benefits. The issue for me has always been, it's like a hidden hazard that consumers think of these, if they think of them as anything, is safety devices. And when your safety device is presenting a serious risk, that's what draws so much attention. And I would just note that we did write, as you pointed out, a safety standard for infant bedrails, but the number of elderly fatalities in a year has always dwarfed the number, which is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but it's always dwarfed the number of infant deaths. So I'm hopeful that we can work diligently on that. Mr. McDonald, thank you. And I can't remember who won the NC State versus UNC baseball game, but they were right up there in the finals. One-on-one. We won one, y'all won one. Okay, good. The one y'all won was more important, definitely. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. You do raise an important issue when it comes to cost-benefit analysis, and this is a pet peeve of mine, as you know. I've always thought we needed to have cost-benefit analysis of cost-benefit analysis. And the statistic that the chairman cited is a correct one. Nine standards under these very complex procedures in section nine and analogous provisions in the Flammable Fabrics Act and the Federal Hazardous Substances Act in 32 years. That's one standard every three and a half years. In contrast, and I realize you can't totally compare them, under the section 104 rulemaking that we've had, we've done eight standards in four years. That's two a year. And so, surely somewhere in between, there is an optimal cost-benefit approach that would satisfy you and satisfy me. I don't oppose cost-benefit analysis, and I will just say one thing in defense of a poor, lonely act, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, that is a cost-benefit analysis act. If you call the Small Business Administration or you look on their website, they are very proud of it as a cost-benefit analysis. OMB calls it a law requiring cost-benefit analysis, and the reason I like it so much is because, and we're gonna hear from the Homemade Toy Alliance, it really focuses on the impact on small entities, which I assume are some of your members. But it does seem to me that we ought to be able to reach some middle ground where we are not oppressed by cost-benefit procedures such that every time Congress gets a chance, they just ignore it, and they either mandate a safety standard or they say, you don't have to do any cost-benefit analysis. So I would urge you to think through whether you can even help me figure out what would a good, efficient, but not oppressive cost-benefit approach be? So I'll take any observation you have. Absolutely, I mean, the last thing we wanna do is tie the commission's hands. We wanna give the commission as much flexibility and as much authority as possible. And that's when we were lobbying for Public Law 112-28, that's what we wanted Congress to do. We wanted Congress to give the commission as much power as possible. And so we don't want a cost-benefit analysis that ties your hands, that keeps you from doing your job. But we want to ensure that the regulations that are put in place are done so in a way that is feasible to an already pretty stretched industry. As Commissioner Nord mentioned, our members, even the small ones that have 10 member staffs are having to take employees from other quality control programs and putting them into their testing and certification. So you're taking away from other items that are making safe products just to be compliant. So it's not about making a safe product anymore, it's about being compliant. So we want to reduce some of these costs, not in a way that would affect the safety of the product, obviously. If I can explain my specific example a little bit. Well, actually, my time is long expired, I apologize for that. And I wanna thank all of you for your testimony. Commissioner Robinson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me first say this is my third day on the job and I'm already just enormously impressed with my fellow commissioners and with the staff here at the CPSC and their commitment to the mission that we all believe so strongly and makes me think I made the right decision to come here. After 18 months of waiting for this, I am delighted that the timing was such that I'm having the opportunity so early in my time here to meet those of you who are doing such an amazing job at helping us do our jobs. And I thank all four of you for your very thoughtful presentations and for your work, obviously, with the commission and with the voluntary standards committees and as I say, helping us do our jobs. I think where I would like to focus my few minutes that I have is on the concern about recall effectiveness. And some of you in your comments have implicitly raised this concern. Obviously, you Ms. Coles raised it explicitly. But as opposed to commissioner Adler's focusing on the technology that we all hope will someday be there, I go to the lower end of that. I mean, my concern personally is much more with how we can improve communication with low income communities that may not be on Facebook and with perhaps non-English speaking communities but the ways in which we, and I know from the statistics we have, we do have and that I've reviewed that those are the communities that seem to have some of the biggest concerns or we have big concerns with those communities in the recall meeting them. Now, you raised Ms. Coles the annual report and that is very interesting to me and in response to commissioner Adler's questions, I liked you saying that if the company see how abysmal they are, maybe they'll hop out more. But I'd be very interested in a couple things. Obviously, we all know about the budget constraints but I'm interested in from any of you and I'm focusing on Ms. Coles just because she raised it explicitly but I'm interested in any ideas you have on first of all how we could implement such a report given the constraints we have and also any ideas you have on how communications can be improved to the communities that seem to be so enormously affected by recalls that we don't seem to be reaching. I can start very briefly and I thank you for your question and in terms of the report, it would be very simple. Every recall, every company that does a recall files a monthly tracking report and every month they have on that report, the totals for the entire recall. So how many products were initially produced, how many were still either with them or in their warehouses or with retailers that were returned, how many were with consumers and then they have both the total in that month's numbers of how many, what went out, what notices went out as well as how many responses did they get, how many people asked for the repair kit, how many people were given a refund and so you just take their most recent monthly report and publish just those numbers, the total number that were with consumers, what number they have accounted for so far and that's the number that we see ranges from two to maybe 30% in a very good recall. So it'd be very simple to do, we have that as information, I don't know if you have it anywhere but on that piece of paper in each file but that information is there and that's what we request for instance when we wanna look at this issue ourselves. In terms of reaching low income communities, obviously that's a big concern of ours with all our safety work that we do on the safe sleep message, it's where you're more likely to find older recalled products because they continue to circulate in the population or other problems with sleep environments and so I think we do all need to focus our energy on how to do that. For instance, there's a big digital divide, not all of them as you say have computers, they're not online, however there is no divide when it comes to cell phones. A low income person is just as likely to have a cell phone that can get text messages as someone who is very wealthy and so that is one avenue that would be very good to sort of figure out how do we harness that and get the information to them through the technology that they do have and that is just working with partners and I know as we keep saying CPSC is already doing some of this, I don't mean to imply that your staff isn't working on this but it just seems such a big problem when I get calls from people who have one of the simplicity drop side cribs that I felt like was in the news everywhere that everyone must have heard about and they heard nothing of the recall. I'm always surprised and try and figure out how we can better reach them, I think it's gotta be a joint effort and then I think the other half of that is how we conduct recalls. We just did some focus groups which I will share the results with, I don't have the results yet but just in sitting in on them. Parents' concerns about the type of recall. So obviously if there's nothing offered for the product they're not gonna comply. If there's a refund or a new product offered they're very likely to comply. What I was surprised about was with the fixes which is what we do with a lot of the recalls. They felt that that meant the company didn't really care if they got it fixed or not so that they were putting the onus on them to get some new part, put it on themselves, maybe not put it on right and they felt that that indicated that the company maybe wasn't as concerned with the product's safety and maybe they should just keep work using it. So I think that kind of information, how we conduct recalls would also help with compliance. The cell phone idea is an interesting one since we've all been creeped out by the first weather warnings that we all get. Yeah and any of the others of you who have any ideas along those lines, I very much welcome them. I know you Ms. Grant talked about the FDA communicating with caregivers for example and I'm not sure exactly how they're doing that but it might be something that we should take a look at and see how effective they've been and whether it's something that, a communication effort that we could duplicate. Thank you all so much. I appreciate it. Commissioner Burkle. Thank you Madam Chair. Let me begin by saying thank you to all of you for your very insightful and helpful and informative comments this morning. As my colleague mentioned, the timing for us is great because we get to hear and have this overview of the issues that are important to you and important to this commission. So thank you, thank you very much. My comments this morning probably will be a little broader because I haven't got the nuances down yet but just a couple of things and as my colleague, Commissioner Nord mentioned, so much of what our perspective is based on our experience in life. And I spent most of my life as a nurse and then as an attorney representing a major teaching hospital. So I come from that background and then having six kids and 13 grandkids, the whole child safety issue is extremely important to me. So my questions will probably be a little bit more general but I do look forward to the opportunity to meet with all of you and the relevant groups to get to know you and to begin to establish relationships so that I can understand your perspective and you can inform me and we can have a good dialogue going forward. Let me begin, Ms. Grant, with the side rail issue because gosh, I remember as a nurse, if we didn't put the side rails up, we got a demerit. So, and as Commissioner Nord said, I have an elderly mother who's 92 and so I know the value of side rails and you've indicated that people who are awake and oriented that they are safe for them but gee, in my experience, it's those who get disoriented when it becomes dark or they're on a pain medication or there's some reason that allows them to be disoriented and they need some protection, some way to restrain them from getting out of bed and thinking they can walk to the bathroom at one o'clock in the morning without assistance. So my question to you is, is if we do these restrictions on the bed rails, how would we? I mean, the olden days we use posey belts. I don't think we wanna go back to that or hand restraints. How would you keep a patient safe with regards to someone who needs to be confined to that bed and can't move without assistance? Well, it certainly is a complicated issue. Certainly acknowledge that. And we, I think you're absolutely right using putting side rails up used to be standard operating procedure. I think it's as we learned and saw the dangers and have seen the injuries and deaths that have resulted from them that we began to think what, how else can we do this? So, I think the issue of somebody who is at risk of falling out of bed, one approach that has been used for quite some time now in nursing homes, where you cannot use bed rails as a restraint has been to lower the bed and to also put mats and cushioning on the floor so that should someone fall, they're not falling as far and they're falling at something that soft as opposed to a floor because we have seen that when side rails are up and someone is determined to get out, they're going to work really hard at that. And very often what may happen is somebody will go over the top and the fall they have is even greater than they would have otherwise and they can hurt them, the risk of injury is even greater. Thank you. Mr. McDonald, you were in the middle of a comment when Commissioner Adler's time ran out. If you wanna just finish that up quickly and then I have a follow up question. Thank you very much and I apologize for taking up all of your time. Our specific example that we are focusing on now for cost of analysis is one in 16 CFR 1110 and what the proposed rule would require people to do is the commission has already found that there's no lead in fabric and through two statements of policies they've made the determination that since there is no lead in fabric, you do not need to test and therefore you don't need to certify. And so we use that in our argument that you don't need to certify in the Flammable Fabrics Act which we still fully support. But the proposed rule would change that. It would require companies to certify that there's no lead in fabric and we don't believe that there is any benefit to that whatsoever. We believe that a simple telling an important structure, there's no lead in fabric. It doesn't matter whether it's denim, cotton, silk, synthetics or anything that there is no lead in fabric. Then a piece of paper stating what is already known is unnecessary and we believe we already are almost about 50% of the entire cost on all industries for paperwork requirements. And so just adding one more that won't have a benefit is a big issue for us and something that we really oppose. Thank you. You mentioned two numbers and I just wanna clarify. You mentioned the 1.4 million hours and then the 51 million additional costs. Is that an annual cost or is that? That is an annual cost and that was from the commission's own research into what the requirements are. And now there's been some other research done that has found that number to be greater and there's hours to be greater but we want to use what the commission finds and we want to support the commission but yes, that's annually. I am the newbie here but I think and I feel very strongly that every really the commission we really do need to look at cost benefit analysis. We have to make sense out of this and what I've noticed just over the two days I've been here is this seems to be a balance and whether it's a safety issue and maintaining the integrity of an elderly patient and their safety but we also have to look at the cost and in an economy that we have had in this country and we've struggled, the economy has been sluggish and just slogging along that we as a commission have a responsibility to make sure when we initiate regulations that not only do they maintain safety but they're responsible and we do understand that it will have an impact on our businesses and what that impact will be and then we weigh that against all of the other factors so I would encourage all of us to do that. Ms. Cleary, I do would like to talk further about the isobutane issue. I think that that's an example. Sometimes we get overzealous about one issue and then but it's at the peril of another so I would like to be a participate and get it more information about that issue. Thank you Madam Chairman, I yield back my time. Well thank you all and we appreciate this fine panel and all the good questions. We'll take a five minute break for the new panel to come forward and get seated and we'll stand adjourned for five minutes. You've already been introduced but I'll go again, Rachel Weintraub with the Consumer Federation of America and Randall Hertzer with Homemade Toy Alliance and Rebecca Munn for the Toy Industry Association and Amiga Dia for Consumers Union. So Ms. Weintraub, please start. Turning it on would help. Chairman Tenenbaum, commissioners Adler, Nord, Robinson and Berkel, I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments to you about CPSC's FY 2014 and 2015 priorities. I'm Rachel Weintraub, legislative director and senior counsel at Consumer Federation of America. CFA is a non-profit association of approximately 280 pro-consumer groups that was founded in 1968 to advance the consumer interest through advocacy and education. I submitted written comments that should be considered as our full comments and I'll highlight some of those issues this morning. First, CPSIA implementation. The implementation of the CPSIA should continue to be of the highest priority for CPSC. These rules have an important and positive impacts on consumers. Because of section 104 specifically, CPSC has promulgated eight infant durable product rules that must now therefore require that these products meet new robust mandatory standards. We congratulate CPSC on their work, on their leadership and their commitment to this important process. CPSC also has additional infant durable product rules to promulgate under this section which we call Danny's Law and we urge CPSC to continue to commit the staff time and resources necessary to prioritize the promulgation of these rules. Consumers recognize this provision as necessary to ensure the safety of their infants and toddlers as they are using these products designed specifically for their use. Another high priority for CPSC should continue to be saferproducts.gov as required by CPSIA. We urge the CPSC to maintain its current commitment to this database and to research reports that appear to indicate trends. Numerous studies and reports on saferproducts.gov have indicated that the database is being used by many consumers and is useful to them. For example, CFA and Kids in Danger conducted a study of the database that released in April of 2012. We found that the database is in fact being used as intended. Of the 6,080 reports we analyzed at the time, almost all were submitted by consumers. 84% of all reports included a serial number or model number. Manufacturers exercised their right to post additional comments on 53% of the reports and 70% of the reports involved newer products as opposed to older products. In addition, Deloitte conducted an analysis of the data from saferproducts.gov that was released early this year and found that saferproducts.gov provides a learning opportunity for manufacturers in their attempt to bring safe products to the market and allows them to gain a better understanding of consumer behavior in regard to their interaction with products. The Deloitte analysis, like others, also identified that kitchen products and appliances in particular make up the largest percent of reports. We recommend that CPSC continue to explore how to make saferproducts.gov more useful and accessible to consumers, including increasing consumer access to saferproducts.gov through the use of mobile applications as a means for reporting the risk of harm to the database. There are numerous hazards that we urge CPSC to continue to prioritize. Quickly, furniture tip-overs. According to CPSC's most recent data, each year more than 43,200 children are injured as a result of a piece of furniture, appliance, or television tipping over. Between 2000 and 2011, there were 349 tip-over-related deaths. 84% of those deaths involved children eight years old and younger. While the ASTM standard for furniture, which I am a part of, is in the process of being strengthened, it's currently being intentionally delayed. Further, much more must be done to bring all of the stakeholders together to collectively address this problem. Second, window coverings. This past May, CFA, along with Kids in Danger, Consumers Union, Parents for Window, Volume Safety, and others filed a petition with CPSC, requesting that the CPSC promulgate mandatory standards to make operating cords for window coverings inaccessible. We appreciate that the petition has been docketed. A strong mandatory standard to address the hazards posed by courted window coverings is necessary because according to CPSC's data, 293 children have been killed or seriously injured by accessible window cords between 1996 and 2012, and the rate of injuries has not decreased since 1983, despite six industry attempts at developing adequate voluntary standards. The voluntary standards process, starting from the first standard in 1996, including the most recent one, has failed to eliminate or even significantly reduced the risk of strangulation or asphyxiation hazards. Descent injuries can be eliminated by designs that already exist, including cordless technology and cord cover designs. We are pleased that CPSC has docketed our petition, and we urge the CPSC to move forward with a mandatory rule that addresses the hazard posed by window cords. Second, adult bedrails. Last May, CFA, the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long Term Care, Gloria Black, and 60 other organizations filed a petition with CPSC, requesting a ban or an effective mandatory standard of adult portable bedrails. The petition also requested CPSC to recall dangerous bedrails and refund consumers. Robin Grant did an excellent job in her testimony, and I won't repeat that now, but we urge CPSC to move forward with the ban, effective mandatory standard, recall, and refund of dangerous bedrails, as well as a meaningful and effective voluntary standard. In terms of enforcement, we applaud CPSC for enforcement efforts this past year to recall the bumbo seat, recall the nap-namny, and take strong action to protect children from hazards posed by rare earth magnets. These strong actions protected children, effectively inform the public about hazards posed by these products, and gave all entities regulated by CPSC a clear indication of how seriously CPSC takes its mission to protect consumers and how effectively CPSC uses its enforcement authority. In terms of civil penalties, based on numerous past recalls, we understand there are numerous civil penalties that are currently pending, but have not yet been assessed. In 2013, thus far, CPSC has assessed six civil penalties and no criminal penalties, and in 2012, there were nine civil penalties and no criminal penalties. These serve important deterrent effects to non-compliance with CPSC laws, and we urge CPSC to prioritize this important element of its enforcement responsibilities. We commend CPSC for including requirements to improve internal compliance procedures and recent settlements, and urge CPSC to continue that practice to increase product safety and reduce repeat offenders. So now I wanna discuss a few critical ongoing safety issues. The first is the issue of low-income child safety. Last month, CFA released a report demonstrating that children from low-income families are at greater risk for unintentional injuries and foodborne illnesses than children from higher-income families. Our report, Child Poverty, Unintentional Injuries and Foodborne Illness, drew from incomplete statistical information and academic studies and found that it's essential to collect socioeconomic data correlated to product-related unintentional injuries and deaths. Our report identified the following about unintentional injuries suffered by children. First, the data. Each year, such injuries are responsible for about 5,000 child deaths, about 5 million emergency room visits and millions more unreported injuries. Over two-fifths of children in the United States live in low-income families. The injuries are suffered disproportionately by children from low-income families. Several studies show that income is a better predictor of risk than race or ethnicity. The death rates of several important types of unintentional injuries may be at least double for deaths from fires and drowning for low-income children as compared to higher-income children according to a study of child deaths in Maine. And non-fatal injury rates are also higher for low-income children. One study found the highest rate among low-income children and the lowest rate among high-income children. Another study found that children receiving Medicaid had injury rates double those of the national average. We look forward to working with the CPSC and other agencies to explore how to better correlate unintentional injury and socioeconomic status as well as how to reduce deaths and injuries associated with consumer products that impact low-income children. Now, all-terrain vehicles is an issue that I've been working on for many years and I know that CPSC has also been working on for many years as well. CPSC must continue to prioritize the issue of ATV safety. While CPSC's rulemaking was required to be finalized last August, we applaud CPSC for holding the ATV summit which we thought was very informative last fall and we urge CPSC to complete the rulemaking which should include a serious analysis of the safety hazards posed to children by ATVs, new design possibilities, the adequacy of existing ATV safety training and materials and efforts to ensure that children are not riding ATVs that are too large and too powerful for them. Recreational off-highway vehicles also pose hazards to consumers that have been associated with more than 170 deaths from 2003 to 2012. The current voluntary standard fails to address significant hazards and we urge CPSC to continue to move forward with its mandatory rule. Then finally, upholstered furniture. We urge CPSC to continue to prioritize the completion of the upholstered furniture rulemaking. In May of 2008, CFA filed comments in support of the rulemaking and we stated that we strongly support a smoldering ignition performance standard and urge CPSC to move forward with implementation of the standard. The adoption of the standard will not only result in superior fire safety for consumers but will also discourage the use of fire retardant chemicals which have been associated with serious health impacts to humans, wildlife and the environment. We continue to stand by that statement and have just recently submitted additional comments just a few weeks ago. So I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you. We support CPSC's existing priorities to strengthen its regulatory and enforcement efforts to fulfill its mission to protect consumers. We urge the CPSC to consider including additional priority issues we outlined and we look forward to working with the commission to address these issues. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you. Ms. Weintraub, Mr. Hertzler. I want to thank all of you for the opportunity to sit before you today and provide comments on the operating plan for fiscal year 2014 and the budget process for 2015. The handmade toy alliance has gone from non-existent in 2009 to an organization with 787 small and micro businesses as of yesterday. And our membership continues to be considerably affected by the CPSC regulation and the following rulings from the CPSC and there's still much to be done to restore the health of these businesses. On August 1st of 2011, Congress passed the bill H.R.2715 which became public law 112-28. And in section two it includes two provisions that aid the handmade toy alliance. The one was the small batch provisions and for various reasons the small batch rules are not widely used by small business and instead small business depends heavily on things like the lead determinations list, component parts rule. And so most of my comments have to do with burden reduction which is the primary way that our group uses to comply with lower cost. The H.R.2715 requirements for exploring and implementing burden reduction led to a stakeholder comment period and the release of a CPSC staff document in August of 2012. That document was titled consideration of opportunities to reduce third party testing costs consistent with assuring the compliance of children's products. The document outlines many essential burden reduction opportunities that staff can pursue and their impact on stakeholders. Later that year in October the commission voted to, excuse me, later that year the commission voted to approve the following actions by its staff and listed eight of those burden reduction options. However, the written motion was a bit different than the verbal motion and the written motion said that the CPSC would issue requests for information and that the staff would analyze those results. And in addition that the burden of proof for the validity of any of these burden reduction possibilities was on the stakeholder or on the submitter of the information. Then subsequently in January of this year, the commission voted to allocate resources in 2013 for staff to issue the RFIs for just four of the eight opportunities and then indicated a timetable with the statement and I quote, for each RFI the commission intends to provide resources in the fiscal year 2014 operating plan to the extent the agency's safety work permits to ensure staff reviews the responses and summarizes any recommended course of action on each item for the commission. End quote. So we're lost basically in another round of comment and left to assume that it will be 2015 before there is some possibility any of these burden reduction opportunities can actually be utilized. The progress the CPSC is making on these burden reduction opportunities is simply not acceptable. Small business and all stakeholders are being held hostage to silly requirements like performing a solubility test on cotton fabric for barium. Therefore the HTA specifically asked the commission to directly fund these burden reduction efforts, number one. Develop a list of materials determined not to contain the eight heavy elements listed in ASTM F963-11 and this is where the testing cotton fabric for barium would fall under. The lead determinations list in 16 CFR 1500 is a primary method used by members of the HTA to reduce the cost of compliance. The requirements of ASTM F963-11 with limits placed on concentrations of heavy metals other than lead complicates this pathway to compliance with additional tests that are superfluous. At a minimum we ask the CPSC to evaluate each material on the lead determinations list to see if it can also appear on a list for the eight heavy metals in ASTM F963. Number two, excuse me. Investigate adding manufactured woods to the lead determinations list and also to a determinations list for ASTM F963-11 heavy metals. Manufactured woods or laminated woods are frequently used in children's products when a dimension of the product increases above 10 centimeters like a wooden puzzle or perhaps a shape sorting box or a dollhouse. For larger wooden components, manufactured wood is more stable and safer than wide pieces of solid wood. Number three, determinations for phthalate concentrations. The CPSC in August of 2012 indicated that untreated unfinished wood, metal, natural fibers, natural latex and mineral products do not inherently contain phthalates and so do not require third party testing. The HTA encouraged this as the CPSC to investigate the potential to expand this list to include paper and paper board, printing and screen printing inks, textiles with manufactured fibers, plant and animal derived materials, manufactured wood products and other materials from the lead determinations list. Number four, establish a list of equivalent tests to those in CPSC administered children's products safety rules. CPSC staff in their document recommended that the commission consider creating, maintaining and recognizing a list of equivalent tests and international standards, conformity to which would be indicative of conformity to the corresponding test in a CPSC administered children's product safety role. Enumerating these differences in toy safety standards is a first step towards reducing duplication in tests and therefore cost. In many cases, the difference in regulations are small and also insignificant, but the small differences create a large economic hurdle for small manufacturers in Europe that export to the US. Number five, define a periodic testing option based on volume of products manufactured rather than solely on a time period. The periodic testing rule sets the periodic testing timeframe based solely on time. The HTA believes there needs to be a periodic test for low volume manufacturers based on quantities rather than time. We urge the commission to revisit the possibilities of a rule which allows manufacturers to retest based on the number of units produced. Number six, continue information and education activities regarding testing rules. The CPSC should publish basic guidance for common types of handmade toys and children's products. This helps a small business to get started and to understand the amount of effort required to meet safety standards. Neil Cohen has already done this in one instance for doll clothing, I believe. We suggest similar guidance on the following product types, infant and children's clothes, wood toys with no moving parts, wood toys with moving parts like wheels or axles, children's jewelry, stuffed or plush toys and cloth and vinyl dolls. These are all typical products that come out of the members of the Handmade Toy Alliance. In conclusion, the Handmade Toy Alliance greatly appreciates the efforts the CPSC has already taken to accommodate our membership with respect to toy safety standards and third party testing. However, it's important to note that there continue to be many opportunities where burdens can be reduced and even eliminated without compromising the safety of consumers. We ask the commission to expedite and fund efforts by the CPSC staff that they have already identified to reduce the burden of third party test and consider ways to provide product specific guidance. Thank you very much. Ms. Mann. Good morning, Chairman and commissioners. The Toy Industry Association appreciates this opportunity to comment on the agency's budget and fiscal, or for fiscal years 2014 and 2015. TIA and it's more than 600 members from toy manufacturers, importers and retailers to toy inventors, designers and testing labs are all involved in creating and bringing fun and safe toys to children. Our members account for roughly 85% of the three billion toys sold in the United States each year. The toy industry is responsible for nearly $22 billion in annual retail sales across the country, more than 530,000 jobs generating nearly $26 billion in wages for American workers and creating an economic impact of nearly $81 billion. Our industry is focused on toys. We are focused on children and we are focused on play. Above all, we are dedicated to keeping children safe while they are at play. Toy safety has long been the top priority for both the association and its members. Since the 1930s, TIA has been the leader in the development of standards such as ASTM F963, the toy safety requirements that were mandated as law in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and that have been used as the model for national safety standards around the world. The toy industry believes in the mission and role of the CPSA. We have valued our past opportunities to work together and we look forward to maintaining the open and constructive dialogue with the commission in the years ahead. We share the same objective to protect consumers, especially the youngest ones from products or in our case toys that would cause them harm. Before we look ahead to the CPSC's priorities for fiscal years 2014 and 2015, TIA would like to first congratulate the commission on its past accomplishments. Madam Chairman and commissioners, your leadership and efforts have affected meaningful improvements in consumer product safety through education, safety standards activities, regulation and enforcement. These fundamental principles serve as a strong foundation for the strategic goals that you have set for the CPSC in the years ahead. Leadership and safety, commitment to prevention, rigorous hazard identification, decisive response and raising awareness. Overall, TIA is supportive of agency initiatives that are aligned with these strategic goals. In particular, the following areas are priorities for the toy industry and in no particular order, these are education, import surveillance and trade facilitation, regulatory cooperation and reducing third-party testing burdens. So our first priority is education. For many years, TIA and the CPSC have collaborated to educate industry about requirements for producing safe products and to educate consumers about their important role in assuring the safe use of products. We look forward to continuing these joint efforts. Additionally, we would like to propose that the CPSC create new educational programs for the agency's new staff and leadership. Such programs could supplement the exemplary expertise in educational efforts already undertaken by staff and might cover topics including consumer product manufacturing, industry operating procedures, supply chain logistics, manufacturing quality control and other realities of production. Industry practices and business dynamics are changing every day. These internally focused educational sessions would provide CPSC staff and regulators with valuable insights and updates into how companies operate today and would further ensure that future regulations are based on up-to-date and practical operations, making them more efficient and effective. For our next point, we support the efforts that the CPSC has undertaken with Customs and Border Protection to stop unsafe and counterfeit toys from entering the United States and to facilitate trade flow. TIA reiterates our offer to assist in the development and refinement of procedures that will effectively identify and stop unsafe products before they enter our ports. But we ask that care is taken to ensure that these new procedures do not delay the importation of compliant products from responsible companies. With time of the essence delivery requirements and just-in-time inventory management at retail, even short delays can result in cancellation of orders. This can have catastrophic consequences for many of our members, particularly smaller businesses. We believe that any changes to requirements that impact supply chain logistics should be coordinated with CBP and taken to account importers' various standard operating procedures, timing, and volume cycles. The formation of a Customs Advisory Committee, similar to CBP's Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations, may help inform the agency on these decisions. As the CPSC continues to develop its risk assessment methodology and increase its presence at the ports, we also recommend that the agency maintain its focus on products that pose the most significant risk to consumers. Our next topic, increasing regulatory cooperation, has been a significant priority for TIA and the toy industry. The toy industry, like many others, has a global presence and our companies rely on cross-border trade as a key aspect of their businesses. As such, we are pleased to see regulatory alignment as one of the CPSC's defined strategic objectives. The strong aligned global safety framework will provide greater consumer protection and facilitate the production of safe, compliant products that can be sold in markets around the world. We encourage the CPSC to continue sharing information and best practices with its international counterparts to promote greater alignment of international consumer product safety standards and to maintain its commitment and dedicate further resources towards achieving this very important goal. The final industry priority is actually the area of primary interest for TIA and its members, reducing testing burdens. TIA supports testing that will help to ensure the safety of the toys. However, current testing requirements are forcing many companies to conduct unnecessary tests of materials that, by their very nature, cannot exceed the defined chemical content limits. Streamline testing requirements will reduce redundant costs, providing a significant benefit to toy and other children's product manufacturers, particularly smaller companies. This means a greater selection of safe products at better prices for consumers. For this reason, TIA calls upon the CPSC to dedicate the resources needed to analyze and implement all approved recommendations to reduce the costs of third-party testing, including those referenced in the recent request for information on materials that can be determined compliant with the fallow and eight heavy metal limits. These represent TIA's top four priorities for CPSC's fiscal year 2014 and 2015 budget. Before we conclude, however, there is one more important and directly related issue which we would like to address. TIA is concerned that the commission's proposal to amend the Information Disclosure Regulation, 16 CFR 1101, will take scarce agency resources away from other recognized or congressionally mandated priorities. Further, we fear that any efforts to diminish these information disclosure protections afforded under section 6B of the Consumer Product Safety Act could negatively impact the voluntary consumer product incident reporting system that has developed over the past 40 years. The potential for a public response on a perception of danger during an investigation is very real and could be quite detrimental to a company or brand, even if there's no actual risk of harm. Moreover, the CPSC has an obligation to provide consumers with accurate, validated information. We therefore request that the current statutory protections be maintained with no change. And finally, on a more personal note to Commissioner Nord and to Chairman Tenenbaum, we do want to thank you both for your service here at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We have all enjoyed working with you very much and you both have done some wonderful things to improve consumer product safety both in the United States and around the world. I would like to join my colleagues in congratulating Commissioner Birkel and Commissioner Robinson. We certainly look forward to working with both of you in the future and of course working with you, Commissioner Adler, to achieve our shared objectives. So with that, that concludes our testimony. Thank you. Ms. Gidea. Good morning, Chairman Tenenbaum and commissioners. My name is Ami Gidea. I'm with Consumers Union. I'm Senior Policy Council. Consumers Union is the public policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. As many others have said, my testimony today highlights some areas in which we hope the agency will focus, but the complete list of our recommendations is contained within our written testimony previously submitted to the commission. I'll start off speaking to the implementation of the CPSIA. Implementation of the CPSIA remains a top priority for CU. We very much appreciate the commission's ongoing efforts to complete this process. The agency's activities so far have significantly increased protections for consumers, and we support and applaud the agency's efforts on this front. Going forward, we look forward to seeing final rules on high chairs, bassinets, bedside sleepers, and handheld carriers, among others. Our tests of certain models of strollers and high chairs have found that certain products can create a risk of strangulation if a child's body slips through the front opening, but the child's head gets stuck under another part of the product. We urge CPSC to continue working closely with the ASTM Juvenile Product Subcommittees to develop strong standards for durable infant and toddler products in order to address these hazards. Regarding the public database, we have been and can remain strongly supportive of the saferproducts.gov database, which is working well. With regards to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, or NICE database, however, we would like to see the public web interface upgraded to allow for multiple-year queries and for the ability to graph data over time. Presently, this must be done by hand and can be quite tedious. In addition, the NICE database should explain in detail in understandable language what methods are used to extrapolate from the data provided by the 100 reporting NICE hospitals in calculating national estimates. Finally, we feel there should be public access to the IPII and IDI databases, as well as product-related mortality statistics. With regards to other areas of concern, I'll speak first to laundry detergent pods. Consumers Union and Consumer Reports have been warning the public of the dangers of detergent pod ingestion for over a year now. Poison control centers around the country are reporting an increase in calls about children ingesting or otherwise being exposed to highly concentrated laundry detergent packaged in small single-dose packages. Some toddlers and young children who swallowed those detergent pods have become extremely ill and have required hospitalization. The pods are very colorful and can often look like toys or candy to small children. In light of the injuries associated with this hazard, we continue to urge CPSC to investigate this product and to adopt stricter standards that will ensure that this product is not accessed by children. We appreciate the agency's education and outreach work on this issue and we hope manufacturers will step up and take measures to better ensure that the pods stay out of the hands of young children. Regarding appliance fires, Consumer Reports conducted an in-depth analysis of federal fire data and published its findings in an article in the March 2012 issue. The findings showed that only half of the appliance fires could be blamed on human mistakes or natural causes. Much of the rest appeared to have been caused by problems with the appliances themselves, such as electrical, mechanical, or design defects. For a follow-up story published in the March 2013 issue, we examined reports of self-starting microwaves from KitchenAid and GE. We were disappointed to learn that the commission's kitchen appliances investigation is no longer active. Consumer's Union continues to urge the CPSC to address appliance fire hazards and to pay particular attention to the risk of self-starting appliances. Regarding Glass Cookware, two years ago Consumer Reports revealed that between January and October 2011, the magazine received 121 new reports of exploding glass bakeware from consumers, which resulted in 18 consumers being injured. So far, we have analyzed over 300 such incidents. In addition, the CPSC product safety database has logged 111 incidents involving Pyrex, four of which have required ER treatment. We urge the commission to investigate this issue thoroughly and address any safety concerns. Next, I turn to bike helmets. Consumer Reports recently tested a number of bike helmets and found that some transferred slightly more force to the head than the limits set by the CPSC bike helmet standard. However, there were many helmets that exceeded the current CPSC standard. This illustrates, we feel, that many of the helmets currently on the market perform far better than CPSC standards currently require. CPSC's bicycle helmet standard has not been revised since it was adopted in 1998, at which time it was modeled on the existing ASTM standard as is required. Since then, the ASTM standard has evolved in important ways. To ensure increased safety of these critically important products, we feel that CPSC should undertake a similar upgrade of its bicycle helmet standard, including more stringent thresholds for impact testing. We also continue to be concerned about flame retardant chemicals and baby products, upholstered furniture, and mattresses. Recent peer reviewed scientific studies provide new evidence that Americans are widely exposed to flame retardants that may pose worrisome health risks and may not even provide much fire protection. The agency should make regulating these chemicals a priority and whenever possible, provide options for physical fire blocking. We urge the CPSC to begin by supporting the new furniture flame ability standard proposed by California, which would steer fire protection measures away from use of these chemicals. We also appreciate CPSC's efforts to push industry towards creating a safer product design for button cell batteries. We encourage the agency to continue focusing on this significant health hazard. Ingestion of these products is a particular hazard for small children. Button cell battery ingestion causes rapid and severe GI tissue damage and perforation due to formation of caustic substances by a battery's low voltage and can result in devastating injuries and even cause death. The agency should also push for the redesign of button cell batteries so that they are non-hazardous if swallowed. I'd also like to echo Rachel Weintraub's testimony commending the agency for their work on the rare earth magnets as well as the bumbo seats. Those are very important steps that the agency's taken. In conclusion, we applaud the commission's efforts to address hazards associated with consumer products and we look forward to our continued work with the agency to help it fulfill its important mission. And also thank you very much to Chairman Tannenbaum and Commissioner Nord for your service. And we look forward to meeting Commissioner Berkel and Commissioner Robinson. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. These were excellent presentations with so much to consider in all four of them. So I've just got a few broad categories I want to talk to you about. One is the upholstered furniture rule that Rachel Weintraub and Amiga Dia mentioned. We, I personally, have gone on record supporting California's actions to repeal technical bulletin 117 and which had the open flame standard which required flame retardants. And I personally in numerous speeches have mentioned in speeches and publicly that I would like our upholstered furniture standard if and when we have one to not rely on any flame, not to be such that it has to have flame retarded chemicals to meet the standards. So, and I think a number of my colleagues support that same position on flame retarded chemicals. We hope that the EPA can act on Congress, will amend TOSCA and address the issue of flame retarded chemicals and their toxicity or whether or not they're carcinogenic through amendments to the TOSCA law. But I think you have strong support here to have flame retarded it's not being used in upholstered furniture. Window cords, there is a petition. We've worked closely with the industry. I visited three of the major manufacturers on site to look at the manufacturer and very encouraged that so many of the window coverings now can with equivalent costs be made cordless. We work with the Department of Defense. I got a letter to, along with the Department of Defense to all private entities who supply military housing to not use corded blinds but to go cordless on any kind of window covering. So we need a strong education campaign that I wish we had the resources to do even more broadly but we're committed to that. And even we've met with all the major retailers who sell corded blinds and one major retailer last year said within three years they would not sell any corded blinds anymore. Can't tell you who that is but it's a major retailer. So we're working on this and like I said, the industry has made incredible strides in having cordless window coverings that are comparable in cost to corded. So we need to continue with our efforts there jointly. I wanted to talk to Mr. Herzl when you mentioned that not many people, of the 787 small and micro businesses in the handmade toy alliance, they haven't taken really advantage of signing up as small batch manufacturers which would take them out of the testing requirements not only for initial testing but periodic testing as well. Why haven't they availed themselves to a huge cost reduction? There's many reasons and that's the case. Probably the primary reason is that the people that register prefer not to be published on a public list of registrants. They perhaps don't have a problem with registering with the CPSC but they don't want to be on a public list of these people don't test their products. That I think would be the primary reason. Well that's really a shame because when we went back to Congress after CPSA was passed, you might be a small agency but you were a mighty force, the handmade toy alliance was a mighty force in Congress and all that was designed to give the handmade toy alliance a huge reduction in the burden of testing. You didn't have to test, you have to comply. But we were hopeful that the component part industry like paints labeled no lead in this paint and wood that you sure you buy untreated wood doesn't have any lead in it but that's a really disappointing news to find out that people are afraid to say we don't test but they could avail themselves to no testing which would help them in terms of the cost. Correct, I don't think that the law requires that the registration be publicly available. I think the law just requires that in order to take advantage of the small batch exemption that they must register with the CPSC. And I guess the CPSC has chosen to make that a publicly available database of the name and the name of the person and the business and the city and the state in which that business resides. Well, it's probably obtainable through freedom of information at request anyway so being transparent and open we just but I'm disappointed that more people aren't taking advantage of that because it was a large burden reduction. And speaking of burden reduction, we're all committed to reduce the burdens and so the first four requests for information proposals we put up, we hope that the people will comment and then we can get those approved this year depending on what we learn and go on as resources permit and each year add more to it so that we can continue our work on compliance and investing in products while at the same time have our staff look for new ways to reduce the burden. Thanks for making that a priority. And Ms. Munn, the issue about risk and important surveillance, we I'm sure you're aware we completed a risk assessment methodology pilot project and that has been very successful and we looked at the criteria for in terms of targeting shipments coming to the United States and risk was a key part of that risk assessment or you're a repeat offender, is it a product that we see many violations in and three is it someone who never imported and should we target them? So we are committed to a risk assessment methodology and we had this pilot project that we are hopeful over the years Congress will fully pay for so that we could have it nationwide. You've heard my speeches that we only have 20 people in our import surveillance division but we rely heavily on our partnership with customs and border protection. So the more we can just target those people who are suspect than others can go through commerce more freely and that's what our goal is. There was so much content in all of your presentations so I won't go into detail because I know other people want to ask questions as well but I did want to bring one thing up to Rachel Weintraub in your testimony, I don't think you had information on our latest civil penalties. So I wanted to point out that in 2013 we assessed some penalties ranging from 450,000 to 3.9 million and also we had criminal penalties that resulted for a repeat offender who knowingly brought non-compliant products getting 22 month prison sentence and that sends a message once we've warned you until you bring in non-compliant products and you repeatedly do it again that you will get a severe penalty. And the last thing I guess I want to talk about is just one more thing is the socio-economic issues of children in lower socioeconomic categories standing, having higher risk and it reminds me of when I was practicing law the very first few years and I was court appointed to represent this baby, I was the baby's guardian and I went out to the home, his grandparents home and there was no crib and there were children all over the yard playing and none of the children had a crib, they'd all been in either cardboard boxes or laundry baskets or even the drawers you took out of the chest or drawers and put a little pallet in there. So all of us who come from areas that are economically challenged realize that this is a huge issue from cribs to flammable fabrics for children so we're very aware of it and anything you do to specifically point it out or anything we could do we would appreciate it but all of our education campaigns working with organizations who give away free cribs and trying to keep cribs out of secondhand stores so that people aren't buying the low end items that have been recalled is we're all very aware of and concerned so anything any of you can do to let us know how we can better approach that we would appreciate. So, Commissioner Nord. Thank you so much, Madam Chairman. Mr. Hertzler, I'd like to continue the conversation about the small batch exemption. As you pointed out, the law does not require that this database be a public database and this was debated pretty aggressively internally and the decision was made non-unanimously to go this way. If that decision is impeding the effectiveness of the exemption and your members do truly believe that they would take advantage of that exception or exemption if we were to change our practices that would be very helpful to have you all give us more information on how you would expect the response to change. So that's just a request of you. I don't know if you want to expand it all more on why they're not using it. Well, I should say it's a very complicated issue. It's not just a single thing because the folks that make handmade toys have a different kind of an investment in their toy than for instance a corporation like Mattel that punches out hundreds of thousands of toys. When you're making that toy by hand you have certainly a different investment in the toy and when that is the case and you have a relationship also with the consumer, a direct relationship, what happens is that the toy maker wants to comply and there are good reasons for that. And so needing to certify saying that this toy does not have lead and it meets this requirement and this requirement without doing a test also poses this dichotomy. How do I certify that guaranteed there's none of this in my particular product if I'm not gonna test it? So they would prefer to meet the requirements through a straightforward procedure like a determination that says if you've got fabric, it doesn't have lead, you don't need a test for lead. So that takes care of the third party test. So there's a preferred route that bypasses the exception. Would something other than a third party testing requirement or a periodic testing requirement that is very rigid is that is our regulation be helpful. If for example they could do it on a first party basis or collectively do it or do it in a way that is less formalized, would that help? Certainly. We all of course are committed to reducing the cost of testing and Congress told us to be committed if we weren't already. In response to the 2011 law, we put up a request for comments. The staff came up with a list of, I forget, between 15 and 20 suggestions. We went with that list down to nine and now we've went over it down to four. And maybe at some point in the future, we will act on whatever recommendations come out of those four items. You've given us a number of other items that you've recommended. Could you give us a priority? Which of those six or seven items that you listed in your testimony would be number one for you? Certainly the determinations list for the eight heavy metals in ASTN F963 would be at the top of the list. Those tests are certainly the most superfluous tests of all of them and then I would say manufactured woods and then the phthalate determinations. Thank you. Now, Mr. Hertzler and Ms. Mellon, you both raised the issue of harmonization of toy standards between the U.S. standard and the European standard. This is something that I've been interested in forever and what's frustrating to me is to try to understand what is preventing that from happening. The two standards, I would suggest are equally protective but they're different. Why can't we get this together and have one standard or an aligned standard? Through our work over the years with the commission, we're really, those two standards are probably about 80% aligned and they are functionally equivalent where a toy that is protective with the United States standard is very safe while a toy that is compliant with the European standard is also very safe. The last 20%, we've seen that last 20% of differences. I think that is mostly because of political influences and so yes, it's certainly, it's going to be challenging trying to further align those two standards but they are both very, very protective. But in your view, they are functionally equivalent with respect to the level of safety. Yes. Okay, so it really would take some strong. Political support. Yes. Thank you. In your testimony, Ms. Mundy, you referred to companies conducting unnecessary third-party testing materials that by the very nature cannot exceed the chemical content limit. Could you give us an example? Sure, a great example. We have one member who provides us information. They are a US manufacturer and every year they have to conduct $175,000 in phallite testing and these are for materials that they know do not contain phallites. The supplier knows do not contain phallites. They know before they get the test report what the test report will say and so that $175,000 could go towards growing the business, towards growing the products, hiring people, so. Yeah, I've actually heard the same example being given from the screen printing garment people who are running into the same problem so thank you for that example. The 2014 budget does include a activity to revise our 6B regulations to take into account social media issues. If the rule were changed to allow the CPSC to release safety information to the public quicker, wouldn't this advance safety and how would such a change impact your membership? Well, on top of the points that raised in the testimony, one of the things that we kept on hearing today was improving the CPSC's recall effectiveness and flooding the public with incident investigations wouldn't help. It would be kind of like the boy who cried wolf but we'd have the agency that cried potential product safety hazards so diluting the, this would ultimately dilute the effectiveness of announcements on actual product hazards. So you don't think it would necessarily advance safety in a meaningful way? No. Okay. Ms. Weintraub. I'm really intrigued with your commentary about the need to address low income consumer safety issues. And candidly, I do agree that this is an area where not enough time and attention has been given. However, it seems to me to be an issue that is a whole lot bigger than the CPSC. So I'm wondering to what extent other agencies are involved in this? How have you reached out to other agencies to pull them in and get some activity going? It seems like this should be an administration effort if you will. Well, thank you very much. And we just released the report last month and we have a number of plans. Am I correct? Our report actually focused on unintentional injury as well as foodborne illness. And it's very broad in scope. We plan to have a number of dialogues. This is something you're starting. Yes, we are starting, this was the launch. But one piece of it that I think is critical for CPSC is that CPSC's data through NICE is really relied upon by CDC for whiskers and others as sort of the benchmark for data. And one thing we would like to explore with CPSC is whether it would be possible to collect socioeconomic data through the NICE process. Okay. One final comment you referred to the database is did your colleague at the other end of the table? And that 97% of the users of the database were consumers. And I just want to put out there what the GAO study found. They looked at this and yes, 97% of the submitters are consumers as defined in our rule. But if you dig deep into the statistics, you find that the victims were 4,400. And then you march through the spouse, the child, the parent, a relative, a client or patient, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, that gets you to about half of that 97% figure. So basically half of the people who identify themselves as consumers are neither the victim related to the victim in any particular way. And I think that that is something that we need to keep in mind as we use that statistic because it does lead to a somewhat misleading result. Thank you very much. My time has expired. Mr. Adler? Thank you very much. Again, an excellent panel and I really appreciate your attendance. And with respect to Ms. Weintraub, I wanted to go to the topic you raised with respect to ATVs, which is another one of my major interests. And this is just said because you can do this any day of the week. And I did it this morning, two headlines. Boy nine killed when utility vehicle hits pile of hay. Four year old ATV passenger killed in Nebraska crash. The fact is that as far as I'm concerned, ATVs are the single worst, most dangerous discretionary product under our jurisdiction. And I'm delighted to hear the support for continuing work on ATV safety. Every year, something on the order of 700 funerals and 100,000 injuries to emergency rooms occur and about one in four of these is to kids. So it's a product that is one of serious concern and I'm delighted to hear that your concerns match mine. And by the way, I thought the safety summit on ATVs was terrific and I've been monitoring and talking to staff. There was a lot of information that was extremely useful, not just with respect to talking to consumers about a safer use of the product, which is important, but also about some significant redesign of the product. If you have any comment, I'd appreciate it. I would just say that there is a very large community that I think was well represented at the summit of academics, of practitioners, of researchers who have been working extensively for many years on this issue and there's really a strong need for CPSC to take action based on all of this research, based on incredible work that's being done throughout our country and in other countries to truly protect consumers and especially our youngest, our children from the hazards posed by these vehicles. Yeah, and speaking of children, I'm looking at our representatives from the toy industry and this is an observation I've made before. We had somebody from AHEM speaking on the first panel and just out of vital curiosity about a year ago, I looked up the number of safety standards that the commission has written with respect to appliances and that is a grand total of zero. There is one safety standard which was enacted before the commission was set up and that has to do with refrigerator doors and it is interesting, Ms. Gidea, to hear you talk about the number of appliance fires. I do think it's a very responsible industry and we work closely with them, but then I turn to the toy industry, which I don't think a year has passed when we haven't had some new regulation or rule or piece of legislation with respect to the toy industry. I don't think anybody has a vendetta against your industry but you do guard these most precious assets, these invulnerable, excuse me, vulnerable involuntary risk takers and so I just wanted to commend you for working so closely with us over the years. It's been a real pleasure to know both of you and to work with you. I was a little disappointed, Mr. Herzler, to hear and I'm not surprised to hear it because I'd noticed that very few of your members have gone the small batch route and I would just invite you to talk to them and see if we can encourage more of them to sign up. I would not personally be in favor of keeping a confidential closed list of people who have availed themselves of the small batch option. I think we're too open and transparent in agency and I think Chairman Tenenbaum's point about even if we tried to keep it secret, one of these two consumer groups would probably walk in and file a FOI request and have access to the information but I did wanna also say that I think the priority that you have for us to work on is the priority that we're working on. This request for information has, and I'm looking at this, determinations regarding the eight heavy metals, determinations regarding phthalates and manufacturing woods are all part of the RFI and I think that's because we listened carefully to concerns that you raised and what we're trying to do in this age of extraordinarily constrained resources is to get the most bang for our buck and these were the ones that would result in reducing third party testing. I am not as pessimistic as you are that this will not be done until 2015. The comment period just closed about a month ago so we have to analyze the comments that are there but I think everybody up here is dedicated and committed to working to try to help your industry and to make life easier for you. So again, and by the way, welcome because I know you were having trouble figuring out whether you could make it to the hearing today and I think you've added enormously to the hearing and that's just a set of comments. If you have any response, you're more than welcome to speak. I did wanna address Ms. Mon, but if you had any. And that is with respect to a topic, I guess on which you and I probably disagree more than most and there aren't that many. It's also one of my favorite points of disagreement with my colleague, Commissioner Nord and that has to do with the benefit of 6B in our statute. I will say two things about the work that we're gonna be doing on 6B. First of all, this is not work to change the statute. The statute will remain. It's work to update the commission regulations which are very, very old at this point and it's just try to make them more consonant with the new age of social media and it doesn't even talk about emails because when it was written, I don't think people were doing emails. But I have to say that if it were such a good idea, I wonder why after 40 some years or almost 40 years, we still remain the one and only agency in the entire federal government that has the kind of restrictions on your information disclosure that are imposed on us by 6B. And I do think that that keeps vital, life-saving information from being made available to the public and I do believe that information disclosure delayed at times unfortunately is information disclosure denied but I did wanna give you some reassurance that what we're doing is if I were, I don't know that resources will be dedicated to it but my guess is it will be more in terms of staff hours or staff weeks and staff months. It's a very quick review designed to promote efficiency within the agency and to be a cost-saver for the agency and I do invite you as I always do to feel free to take issue with what I've just said. You're more than welcome to do that. Those are my comments. Actually, no questions beyond that. Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson. Thank you, Madam Chair and thank you to all of you for your very thoughtful and well-prepared, both written remarks and your oral presentations. I have much to learn. That is obvious but I would very much like to reiterate what my colleagues have said and what I said in my Senate confirmation hearing that while I'm very committed to the mission of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and to keeping our products safe, I'm also, I very much view part of the mission as being to keep the burden as low as we can on our manufacturers while keeping our products safe and while we comply with the mandates that have been given to us by Congress. So I just wanted to give you assurance that and I do not have specific follow-up questions for Mr. Herzler and Ms. Mond with respect to the burden reducing efforts that you've suggested because I need more information but I'm sure I will going forward. Ms. Weintraub, let me first of all just ask you a quick question. You mentioned in response to Commissioner Adler's question about ATVs that other countries have safety standards. Is there one that you point to that we should be taking a look at? Well, I would say it's more that other countries and I'm thinking specifically of Australia have been very active in looking at this issue, addressing this issue. There seems to be a dynamic process looking at new potential designs including a roll bar and there were people from Australia who came to the ATV summit. So I think working collaboratively learning from their new ideas and what seems to work would be a really great idea for CPSC. Right, I was going to ask you about your ideas from the CFA report. I was going to ask about your ideas on what we might do to collect more specific data but it sounds to me in response to Commissioner Nord's question that you just don't have that yet that that's the next step. Right, that is the next step. Although what's something that we'd really like to do is to begin a conversation with the CFA and the many experts at CPSC so that we can get a better understanding of whether it's possible for the nice data to include socioeconomic information because that would be a way that the key information that as I said to Commissioner Nord that's relied upon by CDC and so many of us in our testimony, obviously CPSC collects very important data that's relied upon by all stakeholders but if that data could correlate the information about socioeconomic status and injuries and deaths that would be incredibly useful. Our analysis really identified huge data gaps and what we did was a literature review based upon academic studies that have been conducted by mostly doctors but also epidemiologists over a number of years in specific places so while we identified that there definitely is a consistent thread in the academic literature we also identified this data need that would help us really gain more information about the problem and that's what we'd really like to explore. So I take the academic papers to which you're referring do talk about socioeconomic status? Yes, they do but on a much smaller scale there are studies of in Baltimore on Medicaid there was a study in Maine for example a lot of them are smaller studies and some of them are focused on particular types of hazards and they are consistent in showing that lower income children face higher risks but what we'd really like to do is figure out how to bridge this data gap as well as to help us find solutions ultimately. Right, now you in your written materials urge the CPSC to work with manufacturers of infant and toddler durable products to quote maximize awareness of product registration unquote do you have anything more specific for us than that? Sure, so one of the requirements of CPSIA as part of Danny's law that Nancy Cole did a great job of explaining was product registration for infant and durable products and this is an idea that CFA has long been a supporter of the idea that the best way to notify consumers is to notify the consumers who actually purchase the product and so for the subset of products there's a requirement to provide a product registration card and a means online and what we would like to see is an effort and it has begun already I understand but as an effort to really communicate with consumers that there's this product registration card you could do it very quickly and it could potentially save your child's life by filling in this information your privacy is protected this information will only be used in case of a recall and while this requirement exists we think it would be very helpful for there to be more education more consumer information about it. Okay, Ms. Moond, you in your submission mentioned that the toy industry has cooperated with CPSC and educating industry and consumers on product safety first thank you. But do you have any additional ideas on how we could improve that effort? I think that going to small manufacturers and educating has been suggested by Mr. Herzler over here educating them about the requirements is helpful and continuing efforts overseas to bring the education down the supply chain that's always been very helpful. Mr. Herzler, I take it that you have been working with Mr. Cohen and you're coming up with good ideas for how we can help the smaller manufacturers. Yes, and I think Mr. Cohen has been an excellent addition to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and provides a very valuable service and we certainly utilize him already and think that that area could be expanded even more. Thank you all so very much. Madam Chair. Commissioner Buerkle. Thank you, Madam Chair. As my colleague mentioned, I have an awful lot to learn as well in the details of all of these issues. So first of all, let me say thank you to all of you for being here for your very thorough testimony and it's really very informational for me just starting out. So thank you. And again, I look forward to meeting with each and every one of you and hearing your issues and developing relationships. Mr. Herzler and Ms. Mond, you talked about you're both concerned with the third-party testing. Have either of you or your organizations quantified the cost of this third-party testing? We've worked through both sorts of statistics over the last three years. I would say that probably because of the way the law has gone and people have sort of slid into ways of complying that I don't have any recent statistics of that but we have statistics that are perhaps a year or two old. You know those numbers off the top of your head or could you provide them to the committee? I could provide them to the committee. I think we have previously but I wouldn't want to venture a guess off the top of my head. Thank you. I would appreciate seeing those numbers. Thank you. Ms. Mond? I believe that in total when you add the supplier certification requirements on top of the certification requirements on top of the third-party testing requirements those three regulations which all go hand in hand to believe that the total economic impact and this isn't just for our industry that's at $400 million. And that's an annual cost? That's an annual cost. If each one of you could wave a wand and get your wish but could you just start with Rachel and go down the panel just tell me what is your priority? What is it the one thing you'd like to see this commission achieve? I was thinking about this question when commissioner Nord asked it on the last panel I'll answer your question. I think the commission having such great staff so many staff who are so smart and hardworking happily you could have more than one priority. So I'm very glad of that. I have numerous priorities but I would say that my number one priority would be to continue the prioritization of CPSIA enforcement and compliance. Thank you. Mr. Nurtz? An implementation, sorry. Thank you. That's a dangerous question giving me a magic wand. You only get one wish. Don't get carried away. And I assume you mean in relation to the CPSC. So, Bimini is right out. In this environment then there's no money for Bimini. I'm sorry. Certainly I think the one wish there is to expand the determinations list. Ms. Mond? I would say that it's the request for information on the third-party testing or on the materials that will comply with the valley and the heavy metal limits and the other ways to reduce the third-party testing burdens. Thank you. And Ms. Gadia? I would echo what Ms. Weintraub said regarding implementation of the CPSIA. Great. Thank you all very much. I yield back my time. Well, thank you all for coming. Thanks for excellent testimony and for your great partnerships working with all of you over the last four years. And I want to thank everyone who's joined us online and who came personally to this hearing. We really appreciate everything you did this morning. This meeting is adjourned.