By former CPSC Commissioner Nancy Nord
Leap year occurs every four years when an additional day is added to the calendar—February 29. This is a corrective measure to account for a lack of precision in the earth’s orbit around the sun. According to old folk traditions, during a leap year, role reversals are common, upsetting the usual norms of behavior. We saw the leap year effect in operation last week when the CPSC considered its 2016 operating plan.
During a recent meeting, Commissioner Mohorovic proposed that the agency adopt an enforcement policy to eliminate a costly and burdensome procedure impacting the apparel and footwear industry but that could set a useful precedent for other industries as well. The 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act requires that manufacturers and importers certify that their products comply with safety regulations. One of those regulations deals with the flammability characteristics of fabrics used in apparel, sets out testing criteria to determine flammability and exempts from testing those fabrics that, because of their weight and material, inherently do not present the risk that the rule is concerned with. As the agency rushed to quickly (and somewhat thoughtlessly) implement the requirements of the CPSIA, a majority of commissioners determined that apparel manufacturers needed to certify that exempt fabrics were, indeed, exempt from testing—in other words, they were required to certify that they did not need to test and certify. Talk about circuitous logic!
But this overreach by the agency is costing the apparel industry–and consumers–$250 million each year in paperwork costs. These costs have nothing to do with assuring the safety of consumers and are totally related to wasteful paperwork requirements. Commissioner Mohorovic was able to convince his colleagues to reverse their earlier position and adopt an enforcement policy that abrogates this process of “certifying that you do not need to test and certify.”
In a similar example of good judgment trumping regulatory excessiveness, at last week’s meeting, Commissioner Buerkle convinced her colleagues to agree to direct staff to prepare a briefing package on the attributes of the California revised rule (known as TB-117) addressing the smoldering hazards associated with upholstered furniture. The flammability hazards associated with upholstered furniture have been flummoxing the agency since it was created. The agency exacerbated the problem by insisting that any rulemaking address every ignition source for upholstered furniture fires —not only the vast majority of fires that are caused by smoldering cigarettes, but also those caused by open flames such as lighters and candles. This insistence made the process of writing a rule that much more difficult. And since the majority of fires are caused by smoldering cigarettes, the agency’s approach meant that the risk of upholstered furniture fires went unaddressed while the regulators pursued unrealistic and uneconomical solutions. Given this dithering on the federal level, California took the practical step of writing a standard that applied to smoldering fires, which account for the vast majority of fires.
Commissioner Buerkle’s proposal asking the staff to analyze the California regulation is a good first step in moving the agency toward a realistic and, hopefully, more timely effort to address this important issue. After close to 40 years of analysis, it is time that the agency brought this rulemaking to a sensible resolution. I hope that Commissioner Buerkle’s proposal has given the staff the latitude to accomplish this objective—one which advances consumer safety in a practice way.
Isn’t it too bad that leap year comes only every four years.
Nancy Nord joined OFW Law after completing an eight-year term as a Commissioner on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, serving from 2005 through 2013. Ms. Nord was Acting Chairman of the CPSC from July 2006 until June 2009.
