This summer, millions of toys manufactured in China were recalled due to excessive levels of harmful lead paint or small magnets that posed a choking hazard to children. Understandably, these events have caused public concern about the safety of Chinese products made for children.

 

So in August, I sent a letter to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the agency charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from consumer products. The agency faces many obstacles, the greatest of which is understaffing. In fact, the CPSC has lost 15% of its workforce in 2004 and employs only one full-time toy tester. In my letter, I expressed my concerns about these recent gaps in consumer safety protections and pledged to work with CPSC to improve consumer safety, particularly the inspection of foreign-made products.

 

In addition, this week, the House took an important step in protecting children from faulty products by passing a series of child safety measures:

 

The Danny Keysar Child Product Notification Act aims to prevent injuries or deaths resulting from unsafe cribs, high chairs, and other products for infants and toddlers by requiring direct notice of recalls to consumers. When it comes to our kids’ safety, word of mouth isn’t an effective system. This bill puts into place a system to ensure parents receive the information they need to make the best choices to keep their children safe.

 

A second bill encourages companies to promptly report safety problems in their products by raising the maximum fine to $10 million. It is my hope that increased financial penalties will deter companies who might be willing to sacrifice consumers’ safety for financial gain.

 

These consumer safety measures will go a long way in protecting our kids from faulty products. And I will continue to look for other commonsense ways to improve consumer safety protections.