So the week spent with other product safety folks at the International Consumer Product Health and Safety (ICPHSO) Symposium was full of information and opportunities to collaborate on new approaches to safety. The first day and 1/2 of the meeting focused on injury prevention. Representatives from the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, including our 2007 KID’s Best Friend, Dr. Elizabeth Powell, presented information on their research and education efforts. Then, through a series of workshops, representatives from industry, retailers and consumer groups brainstormed with them on injury prevention ideas we could all implement.
Dr. Powell was joined by two other KID’s Best Friend honorees — Dr. Gary Smith (2010) who spoke on his research on smoke alarms and children and Rachel Weintraub (2004) of Consumer Federation of America who organized and moderated the injury prevention segments.
KID’s executive director, Nancy Cowles spoke on a panel on recalls. She stressed the need for better recall effectiveness and the rights of consumers to have information on product hazards. In addition, Cowles participated in an injury prevention workshop on toy and home safety.
Much of the conference was dedicated to new changes from CPSC including the database and testing requirements.
We also saw new tools such as the HD XRF machine which can detect heavy metals with more precision than regular XRF guns.
CPSC Chair Inez Tenenbaum spoke and on the final day, CPSC Commissioner and business school professor, gave a talk on negotiating with the CPSC.
More info and membership information can be found at ICPHSO.org.
