Thursday, April 22, 2010

CPSIA - Mea Culpa, I was WRONG!

I am man enough to admit when I'm wrong - and I was wrong the other day. To my readers, I apologize. I probably left you with the impression that the "common toy box" is not a safety concern and that building the entire CPSIA edifice around a half-baked idea was a grievous mistake. And now look who's eating crow . . . me!

One of my readers points out that the common toy box is sadly a very dangerous thing after all and has caused injuries and even deaths over the years. My reader actually had data to share. Common toy boxes have been recalled 14 times since 1974 by the CPSC. One of the recalls was for lead-in-paint but that resulted in no injuries. The other 13 were for lids closing suddenly and entrapment, and tragically two deaths and several injuries were reported.

You can find these recalls at this link by searching for "Toy Chests/Trunks".

The Waxman staffers are right - the "common toy box" is a serious issue. Unfortunately, they don't know seem to know WHY toy boxes are a safety issue. It's not what's inside a common toy box that causes problems - it's the common toy box ITSELF.

We might make life a bit simpler by banning common toy boxes, and then restoring the previous version of the CPSA while we're at it.

1 comment:

Therrin (Ben S) said...

Hmm, I don't know, seems like these are examples of "uncommon" toy boxes. o.o

At least we'll have clacker balls.