Our Children's Safety

Our Children’s Safety:

Who should be responsible?

In today’s materialistic society who should be held accountable to make sure that the products that our children use or that we use for them are safe for them. With so many products in the marketplace today that are geared for children who should make sure that these products are safe? Should it be the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) which is “the federal regulatory agency responsible for overseeing the safety of most consumer products in the U.S., including durable baby products, home improvement products (e.g., power tools, lawnmowers, drills, and ladders), and recreation equipment (e.g., scooters, snowmobiles, bicycle helmets, and playground equipment) (Felcher 2003). Should manufactures be held more responsible for the injuries or deaths caused by the use of their products, “even products designed to protect your children can put them at risk,” this includes infant seats, safety gates, pool gear, and protective helmets, (ALERT: Unsafe “Safety” gear for kids 2003). Lastly should the parents watch their children more closely when they are playing toys or using other consumer products? And maybe the answer doesn’t lie completely within one of these areas but possibly a combination of them would help protect out children better.

Back to the question of how responsible manufacturers should be for the products that they either produce, distribute, or both. All products are thought up by someone and then there is the task of finding a company to take interest in the product and have the desire to spend the money to manufacture said product, but just how safe are the products that are manufactured for our children. In the consideration of safety issues manufacturers must take into consideration what is defined as foresee ability of injury as defined in the court case of Winnett vs. Winnett, the definition reads as follows, “a manufacturer is expected to protect against those injuries that are reasonable to expect and, therefore, foreseeable,” (Murphy 1998).

In the court case of Pierce v. Hobart Corp. a 10 year old boy was using a food grinder that he obviously didn’t have the mentality to use and when he got his fingers caught while grinding a piece of cheese and was badly injured. The boys parents sued the company lost when the company said that they didn’t design the product to be used by a 10 year old and a 10 year old lacks the maturity to use the product so the case judge agreed with company on the issue, (Murphy 1998).

One of the biggest things to plague the toy market today is the manufacturing of toys abroad for distribution in the United States. “China manufactured every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the United States so far this year,” (Lipton & Barboza 2007). Of the toys recalled this year that were manufactured in China there was an instance of Thomas & Friends train sets being covered with lead paint and a ghoulish fake eyeball that was found to be filled with kerosene. The Chinese produced products that are recalled by the CPSC has doubled in the last five years and this most likely has something to do with China’s surge as the “world’s toy chest”, with these toys making up 70 to 80 percent of the toys sold in the United States today. (Lipton & Barboza 2003)

In 2004 the government issued the largest number of products when it announced a recall of 150 million pieces of toy jewelry that had been sold in vending machines around the country. The problem with the products that were manufactured in India and imported for four different companies for distribution was found to contain dangerous levels of lead in the jewelry. Luckily with this recall that the companies agreed to there were no real problems before the jewelry was recalled and the companies involved worked with the CPSC to get the problem resolved. Even though the toys were sold for between 25 and 75 cents doesn’t mean that they do not have to be safe for our children. (Labaton 2004)

We as consumers should not have to worry about our children playing with cheap toys because they should be held to the same standards as other toys. Case in point is an article about Fast-Food toy giveaways having a high number of recalls. Fast-Food restaurants together distribute nearly one-third of all toys in the United States each year. As these toys are becoming more sophisticated they are remaining in toy boxes longer and this could be leading to more recalls. And while these companies give out large numbers of toys in a short amount of time can also lead to larger recalls. Ann W. Brown from the safety commission had this to say about the toy give away market that puts it into perspective, “Fast-food restaurants are a big source of toys, just because a toy is inexpensive and is given away doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be as safe as the safest toy.” (Barnes 2001)

So what kind of tests should manufactures use to ensure the safety of our children? One article that I found a little disturbing as a parent myself was from February 2007 issue of Consumer Reports about car seat safety. The article wants to know why car seats aren’t tested as rigorously as the cars that they go in. While cars get “star” marks that are widely publicized regarding their frontal and side crash tests there is no such incentive for car seat makers. The problem with most infant car seats that were tested is that they can fly off their bases in crashes causing injuries or even death. Also there were some problems with LATCH straps breaking. I think that manufactures need to test their products more effectively since we put our children in car seats so that they will be safe while riding in cars. And this can obliviously be done because foreign markets for car seats have tougher standards then we do here in the US. Actually one company Britrax Childcare Group makes car seats for sale here and abroad and the car seats that they sell abroad pass safety testing better then the ones that they sell in the US, so the capability is there if these manufactures were pushed to make the grade here. (What if this were your child 2007)

One of the best ways to test toys and other children’s products are to watch the toys in action with their intended users. One company that does this and has been doing this for many years is Fisher-Price. Founder of Fisher-Price, Herman Fisher began watching his children and their friends play with the companies toys in his living room in the late 1930’s recalls a