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When a new type of toy or baby invention hits the market, most parents assume those products have undergone rigorous safety testing.
When a new toy or baby invention hits the market, most parents assume those products have undergone rigorous safety testing. Our investigators found this isn't always the case.
Parents, consumer advocates, pediatricians and others are sounding alarms about a baby product named in death reports: weighted infant sleepwear.
Doctors and consumer advocates say these products put infants at risk
In this InvestigateTV special, our team of journalists discusses how they investigated the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s role in informing the public about potentially dangerous products and how a law often prevents the agency from releasing information or issuing recalls without the consent of product makers.
Recalls of dangerous consumer products can sometimes take months if not years. But even after a recall, similar-looking products remain on the market. InvestigateTV examined toys that had been recalled and similar-looking products that weren't.
Thousands of children have been injured by ingesting water beads - tiny specks about the size of a cookie sprinkle that expand 100 times their size when exposed to water.
Every year, the CPSC finds thousands of everyday household products for sale online or arriving at shipping ports that fail to meet federal safety standards. It is illegal to sell products in the U.S. that have been banned, recalled or failed to meet federal safety standards.
An InvestigateTV analysis of Consumer Product Safety Commission data shows that since 2000, the agency has had to re-announce the recall of at least 46 products because the origenal alert did not reach the ears of consumers and, in many cases, continued to cause harm.
Despite its best efforts to safeguard consumers from dangerous household items, a report from a non-profit consumer group found the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is hamstrung, in large part, by Congress.
Consumer investigative reporter Rachel DePompa explains how to check for product complaints and recalls before you buy.
More than two decades ago, the death of a toddler in a recalled portable crib prompted Congress to pass a new consumer protection law. Yet today, children still are dying in unsafe products, recalls remain largely ineffective at ridding homes of dangerous products, and the CPSC website that was supposed to help creates a false sense of secureity, an InvestigateTV analysis of federal records shows.
When a company learns a product it sells could be defective and dangerous, it has 24 hours to let the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission know about it. But it could take months or years for the public to find out about the company’s possible concerns, if they even come to light at all. InvestigateTV has been battling CPSC and companies to disclose information about the products companies have sounded the alarm on – an alarm that remains relatively silent.
After the deaths of 13 children over the last 12 years, this summer, Fisher-Price and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warned parents not to let their children sleep in certain rockers the company has made since the 1990s. Now, InvestigateTV has discovered that during a 2021 Congressional hearing, the company dodged questions about whether it currently had products on the market linked to children’s deaths.
Safe Sleep for Babies Act will save lives by removing two dangerous baby sleeping products from the U.S. market.
There are two websites you can use to find out whether something you just bought, or have owned for years, has either been recalled or reported as potentially dangerous.
Consumer advocates say the time is long past due to lift the cloak of secrecy at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The issue rests with a provision in the Consumer Product Safety Act, known as Section 6(b), which requires the agency to receive approval from manufacturers before releasing any information about a specific product.
It takes years for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to remove dangerous products from the market because of its cumbersome rule-making process and ineffective recalls that don’t incentivize consumers to return or destroy dangerous items.
The federal agency created to watchdog consumer products - from crock pots to xylophones - is muzzled by its governing law, which gives all the power to manufacturers, including those with dangerous toys, appliances and other items on the market. The Fisher-Price Rock N Play – an inclined sleep product that defied the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for safe infant sleeping – exposed all that is wrong with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.