Safety Agency Faces Scrutiny Amid Changes | By ERIC LIPTON | Published: September 2, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — In March 2005, the Consumer Product Safety Commission called together the nation’s top safety experts to confront an alarming statistic:
44,000 children riding all terrain vehicles were injured the previous year, nearly 150 of them fatally.
National associations of pediatricians, consumer advocates and emergency room doctors were urging the commission to ban sales of adult-size A.T.V.’s for use by children under 16 because the machines were too big and fast for young drivers to control. But when it came time to consider such a step, a staff member whose name did not appear on the meeting agenda unexpectedly weighed in.
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Robin L. Ingle, then the agency’s hazard statistician and A.T.V. injury expert, was dumbfounded. Her months of research did not support Mr. Mullan’s analysis. Yet she would not get to offer a rebuttal.
“He had hijacked the presentation,” Ms. Ingle said in an interview.
“He was distorting the numbers in order to benefit industry and defeat the petition. It was almost like he still worked for them, not us.”
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At a time when imports from China and other Asian countries surged, creating an ever greater oversight challenge, the
Bush-appointed commissioners voiced few objections as the already tiny agency — now just 420 workers — was pared almost to the bone....
At the agency’s cramped laboratory, a lone employee is charged with testing suspected defective toys from across the nation. At the nearby headquarters, safety initiatives have been stalled or dropped after dozens of jobs were eliminated in budget cutbacks.
Other workers quit in frustration. The head of the poison prevention unit, for example, resigned when efforts to require inexpensive child-resistant caps on hair care products that had burned toddlers were delayed so industry costs could be weighed against the potential benefit to children.
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The guns were flawed, the agency staff had argued, because a BB could become lodged within the barrel even when the chamber appeared to be empty, a condition that agency research showed had
caused at least 15 deaths and 171 serious injuries, most of them involving children.Citing Daisy’s “precarious financial condition,” Mr. Stratton
rejected the recall plan — and the court proceeding that is necessary any time the commission wants to force a company to accept a recall — saying, “I consider this administrative legal proceeding to be burdensome and inefficient.”
In an unusual step, he personally negotiated an agreement with the company to put a bigger warning label on its guns and spend $1.5 million on a safety education campaign. William B. Moran, the administrative law judge hearing the case, condemned Mr. Stratton’s alternative as toothless and said the deal would “create the risk that the public could perceive its decision as driven by its political makeup.” But the commission approved the settlement in a two-to-one vote in November 2003.
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In that role, he argued against a ban on sales of A.T.V.’s for use by children, and a staff report concurred. Adults could still buy the machines and permit children to ride them, Mr. Mullan said, and the agency did not have enough staff to enforce the mandate. Agreeing, the commission rejected a ban.
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Unlike other mandates, new rules in involving poison prevention could be set by the agency without conducting a cost-benefit study, according to federal law. But Ms. Barone was told that the economic analysis was being pushed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, agency documents show.
“We are talking one to two cents per package here for something that we know is toxic,” said Ms. Barone, who now works for the F.D.A. “The other option is just to wait for more children to get hurt. It is just kind of sad.”
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Mr. Moore, the commissioner appointed by Mr. Clinton, told Congress in March that it would
take years to recover from the loss of employees with expertise in toys, fire-related hazards, drowning prevention and chemical risks, among others.A senior agency official was more blunt.
“It is a complete disaster,” said the official, one of nearly a dozen who spoke anonymously because the agency had instructed employees not to talk to reporters. “There is just no other word for it.”
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And cigarette lighter manufacturers,
finding themselves at a competitive disadvantage to Chinese companies that ignore the voluntary standard, are seeking safety rules for lighters. The consumer commission, though, has declined so far to move ahead, saying the 90 injuries and 10 deaths linked to fires caused by defective lighters were not enough to justify the mandate.
