Acting Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle’s Speech at the 2017 International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization
February 22, 2017, cpsc.gov
The new CPSC leader shares her vision and mission for the CPSC in remarks delivered at the annual symposium of the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization. “I have spent my life in advocacy. I believe this is where I am meant to be. This is critically important that we all work together to advance safe products,” she tells the group. “Our focus must remain on safety, data, and science.”
CPSC Acting Chair Buerkle Announces Top Priorities at Product Safety Conference
February 27, 2017, Lexology (Registration) (Crowell & Moring)
The Acting Chairman’s top 3 priorities include collaboration; a “balanced and reasonable approach” to product safety regulation; and promoting product safety education and awareness, through knowledge of the agency, to consumers and businesses. Her statement of priorities was announced at the 2017 ICPHSO symposium in Orlando, Florida.
Keurig settlement an expensive reminder about product defect reporting obligations
February 28, 2017, JDSupra (Robinson + Cole)
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently announced a $5.8 million agreement with Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. settling claims that the company failed to report a product defect that posed an unreasonable risk of serious injury to consumers. Keurig received about 200 reports of incidents between 2010-2014, over half resulting in injury. Keurig didn’t begin investigating the defect until June, 2014, and did not submit a full report to the agency until the end of November 2014.
CPSC Commissioners’ Views:
>Statement of Chairman Elliot Kaye on the denial of termination of the rule making for recreational off-highway vehicles
January 27, 2017, cpsc.gov
On January 25, 2017, the Commission voted 3-2 to deny, at that point, termination of the rule making to promulgate a safety standard for recreational off-highway vehicles (ROVs). Two issues kept the Chairman from supporting termination, including a hangtag issue that Kaye described as “the linchpin in the first line of defense in the standards against injury or death. I am talking about rollover.”
>Statement of Commissioner Marietta S. Robinson on the vote on termination of rule making related to recreational off-highway vehicles
February 8, 2017, cpsc.gov
Commissioner Robinson’s decision to vote not to terminate rule making on recreational off-highway vehicles (ROVs) was based in part on the industry’s position in resisting “CPSC’s suggestions to achieve vehicle stability, handling, and occupant protection.” She says that CPSC is focused on “safety first,” while the ROV industry “would prefer a voluntary standard that manufacturers already meet or can easily meet, which lowers the cost of compliance.”
Samsung Electronics creates office for product quality improvement
March 1, 2017, reuters.com
Tech giant Samsung has created an office of global product quality improvement as it tries to recover form costly failures of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. A Samsung leader has been appointed to oversee this effort in the company’s plan to rebuild consumer trust after being forced to end sales of the near $900 Note 7 phones in October 2017.
California proposes conforming amendments for temporary point-of-sale Prop 65 warning requirements for BPA exposure
February 28, 2017, National Law Review (Keller and Heckman LLP)
California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment intends to repeal several sections of its Proposition 65 regulations, which were adopted under the emergency rule making temporarily allowing point-of-sale Prop 65 warnings for BPA exposures, because they are inconsistent with more recent amendments.
Opinion: Brexit versus the new globalization
February 27, 2017, japantimes.co.jp
As information and communication costs have spiraled down to near zero, and as information storage capacity has grown at an exponential rate, the pattern of production by the world’s manufacturing giants has become heavily internationalized and dispersed. One author analyzes that the change to a new kind of globalization has led to turbo-charged growth in the flow of know-how information packages, data, and services of all kinds, generating more wealth than all global goods trade. The UK, it turns out, may be well positioned to take advantage of this trend.
After Flint, Feds and some states speed up time for notifying public about lead contaminated water
February 27, 2017, governing.com
The nation’s public water utilities will have to tell their customers within 24 hours—rather than 60 days—if dangerous levels are detected in homes they service under a law Congress passed in response to the Flint water crisis. Two states, Michigan and Ohio, have already passed laws requiring faster notification.
Volkswagen executive pleads not guilty in emissions scandal
February 23, 2017, Detroit Free Press
Oliver Schmidt, accused of working with a group of Volkswagen executives over a period of years to develop, deploy, and conceal devices that enabled the German automaker to cheat on laboratory emissions tests, has pleaded ‘not guilty’ in federal court in Detroit. He is one of six Volkswagen executives indicted in January, one of whom pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. last fall.
