Kids Injuries up Even as Defective Products Recalls Down
On behalf of Brown & Crouppen, P.C. posted in Defective Products on Monday, April 2, 2012
A new report from a product safety advocacy group says that injuries to children due to defective children’s products rose significantly last year, despite a 24 percent drop in the number of such recalls and new rules designed to make it easier for parents to learn about defects discoverfed in their baby items. It appears that poor publicity about recalls, even concerning potentially dangerous problems, is at least partly to blame, with as few as 15 percent of recalled products ever being returned to the manufacturer.
The report, released by the group Kids In Danger, found that injuries and incidents related to recalled children’s products increased by seven percent in 2011 over the previous year. This increase came despite the drop in overall recalls of goods for kids.
Kids In Danger cited a Consumer Product Safety Commission report that just 15 to 30 percent of products that are subject to a safety recall are ever returned or sent back for repairs. This suggests that many parents do not learn about important recalls, since the vast majority would not knowingly expose their children to hazardous cribs, baby monitors and so on.
A fairly new CPSC rule requires manufacturers to include registration cards with certain children’s products so that parents can be put on a recall notification list. But the rule has only been in place since June 2010 and experts do not have enough data on the system yet to know whether it is making a difference.
Parents in Missouri who are concerned about whether they have recalled items in their homes can sign up for email notices by visiting CPSC’s website, along with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website for information about car seat recalls.
Source: USA TODAY, “Recalls of unsafe kids products down but often ignored,” Jayne O’Donnell, April 2, 2012