Maybe the CPSC should delete 'safety' from its title?
Under Trump, the agency is not only not passing new safety measures, it's deleting old ones
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) seems to be taking its cues from the battered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Both agencies are jettisoning years of work, abandoning regulations and rules enacted in response to the many and varied disasters that can befall consumers.
In the latest example, the CPSC this week withdrew several proposed rules that were being considered to reduce product safety dangers, including hazards posed by table saws, off-road vehicles, and aerosol duster products. Consumer advocates say the action was "founded in politics and cruelty."
“The withdrawal of vital safety rulemakings is not grounded in evidence or morality, but in politics and cruelty,” said Daniel Greene, the Senior Director of Consumer Protections & Product Safety at the National Consumers League (NCL). “Hazardous table saws, toxic aerosol dusters, and structurally weak recreational vehicles are a choice, not an inevitability."
Less safety, more amputations
"The CPSC chose less safety and more amputations, impalements, and poisonings. It’s time for Congress to do what the CPSC won't—put safety first and require these safety standards by law,” Greene said.
The CPSC, under its new leadership appointed by the Trump Administration, contends that the proposed regulations were outdated and unnecessary.
"Today marks a turning point for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Under new leadership, CPSC is returning to a safety mission rooted in sound science, robust data, and common sense," said Acting Chairman Peter A. Feldman in a prepared statement.
"Regulations and practices that do not reasonably advance safety – but instead promote unscientific ideological agendas, impose unnecessary costs, restrict consumer choice, or reduce competition, entrepreneurship, and innovation – are no longer agency priorities."
The commission also directed its staff to rescind "two outdated rules governing citizens band radio antennas, which have no relevance to modern consumer products," and Eisenhower-era refrigerator safety mandates aimed at models that it said have not been produced in over 50 years.
Gas stoves get a green light
The commission is also jettisoning proposals regarding gas stoves. Those proposals date from the Biden Administration and are based on findings that gas stoves produce emissions that are harmful to human health and the environment.
"That review followed the 2022 circulation of a former commissioner’s proposal to ban gas stoves, a proposal rooted in climate ideology not consumer safety," Feldman said. "Under new leadership, the Commission has made clear it will not regulate gas stove emissions or ban this product category, consistent with President Trump’s agenda and his commitment to preserve the freedom of the American people to choose from a full range of goods and appliances."
“We’ve known for a long time that [nitrogen dioxide] has many harmful effects on health,” said Josiah Kephart, an assistant professor in the department of environmental and occupational health at Drexel University, in a recent Scientific American article.
“Our knowledge of the health impacts of outdoor NO2 has grown dramatically in the last 10 years, and we have found that it is much more of a health risk than perhaps we previously thought,” Kephart said.
What’s a life worth?
The Commission is also rescinding its guidance on the statistical value of life, which he called "ill-conceived and methodologically suspect." He said it "inflates claimed regulatory benefits, and jeopardizes the legal viability of any rulemaking that relies on it."
Perhaps close to the point, the assigned value of a life can affect the damages awarded in wrongful death and product liability cases.
Risks enumerated
While Fenton contends the proposed regulations are unnecessary, there is no questions that table saws, off-road vehicles and aerosol dusters are hazardous.
In a 2008 study of table saw accidents, the CPSC found that the estimated number of emergency room treated injuries associated with table saws averaged 29,000 per year from 1991 to 2000.
In an earlier proceeding regarding off-road vehicles, CPSC staff reviewed 329 reports of ROV-related fatality and injury incidents that occurred between January 2003 and September 2010. These reports included 169 fatalities and 299 injuries. "A significant hazard pattern associated with the ... incidents involved a quarter turn lateral rollover of the vehicle, full or partial ejection of the occupant, and subsequent crushing of the occupant’s head or body by the vehicle. Additionally, it is known that at least 42 percent of occupants were not wearing a seat belt, and 42 percent had unknown seat belt use status."
As for aerosol dusters, CPSC found that for the ten-year period from 2012 to 2021, there were CPSC more than 1,000 deaths, and an estimated 21,700 treated injuries involving the inhalation of aerosol duster products. It proposed a rule to address prevention of future deaths and injuries associated with the propellants HFC-152a and HFC-134a used in aerosol duster products.
Business must be protected
It’s hardly news that the GOP is generally regarded as the party that favors business interests, which is perfectly legitimate and defensible. What’s a bit hair-raising about the current administration is its rapid destruction of measures that turn the clock back a century or so in terms of consumer and worker protections.
Maybe all this mayhem will be good for the stock market. Does that make it all worthwhile?