Scope
The CPSC regulates the sale and manufacture of more than 15,000 different consumer products, from cribs to all-terrain vehicles. Its authority ranges from barbecue grills to swimming pools.The CSPC is a regulator of products. Products not under jurisdiction of the CPSC include those specifically named by law as under the jurisdiction of other federal agencies; for example, automobiles are regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, guns are regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and drugs are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. In recent years, the CPSC has taken action against suppliers of chemicals that could be used to manufacture fireworks. Within the scientific and educational communities, there are some who feel these actions have hampered legitimate scientific research (such as research into the use of hydrogen as an automobile fuel), model rocketry, and high school chemistry projects.
CPSC fulfills its mission by banning dangerous consumer products, issuing recalls of products already on the market, and researching potential hazards associated with consumer products. CPSC learns about unsafe products in several ways. The agency maintains a consumer hot line and website through which consumers may report concerns about unsafe products or injuries associated with products. The agency also operates the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), a probability sample of about 100 hospitals with 24-hour emergency rooms. NEISS collects data on consumer product related injuries treated in ERs and can be used to generate national estimates.
In the 1970s the CPSC issued regulations on bicycles, which required a number of reflectors—including a white reflector mounted above the handlebar stem (the usual location for a bicycle headlight) and can only be seen by a motorist if the bicycle is being ridden on the wrong side of the road—as well as auxiliary brake levers (variously known as "safety levers" and "suicide levers.") These regulations were widely criticized by adult cyclists, like John Forester, as stemming from the belief that all bicycles are ridden by children and as providing the illusion of safety but actually creating a new hazard.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Famous quotes containing the word scope:
“Every person is responsible for all the good within the scope of his abilities, and for no more, and none can tell whose sphere is the largest.”
—Gail Hamilton (1833–1896)
“As the creative adult needs to toy with ideas, the child, to form his ideas, needs toys—and plenty of leisure and scope to play with them as he likes, and not just the way adults think proper. This is why he must be given this freedom for his play to be successful and truly serve him well.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old “laissez faire” school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)