All righty, welcome back to our final panel. We are pleased to have with us for this panel, Ms. Daniel Iverson for the American Apparel Footwear Association, Mr. Al Silverberg from selectshops.com and I think selectblinds.com, Mr. Ted Alcorn from Every Town for Gun Safety, Ms. Liz Hitchcock for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, and Dr. Stephanie Fox Rawlings from the National Center for Health Research. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Ms. Iverson, please, if you will. Good afternoon, my name is Danielle Iverson and I'm Manager of Government Relations with the American Apparel Footwear Association, also known as AAFA. On behalf of AAFA, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the commission's budget priorities for fiscal year 2017 and 2018. AAFA is a national trade association representing apparel and footwear industry, including its suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and service providers. Our industry accounts for more than 4 million US employees and more than 361 billion in retail sales each year. Product safety is of the utmost importance for AAFA member companies. To support our members, many of whom are engaged in the production and sale of children's clothing and footwear, AAFA has taken the lead in educating the industry on the development, interpretation, and implementation of product safety regulations. Thank you to many of you as well as commission staff who have shared your time and expertise by attending a number of our AAFA product safety events. AAFA offers the following recommendation on the priorities the commission should consider emphasizing and dedicating resources toward in the fiscal year 2017 operating plan and the fiscal year 2018 congressional budget request. International testing harmonization and mutual recognition of standards. AAFA firmly believes in the need for international testing harmonization as well as mutual recognition of testing to support product compliance and certification. When testing for compliance with a particular regulation, duplicative testing is counterproductive and does not provide any greater assurance of compliance. Presently, the commission has the opportunity through the transatlantic trade and investment partnership negotiations between the European Union and the United States to promote global harmonization and mutual recognition of standards. European negotiators have signaled their interest in pursuing regulatory harmonization initiatives with respect to textiles and apparel and the forthcoming TTIP trade agreement. Such an initiative could provide provisions relating to labeling, safety, market-driven standards and bilateral cooperation. AAFA has long recommended including regulatory harmonization for both footwear and apparel and the TTIP. Most recently at a stakeholders meeting during the 13 round of talks in New York and echoed last week in a joint footwear statement which I believe everyone on the commission received. We strongly support the intention to harmonize technical regulations and approaches to guarantee product safety and consumer protection. Ideally, the US and EU should work to remove unnecessary and redundant testing by expanding of acceptance of conformity assessment bodies and moving towards a single international standard test method. Lastly, we note that an amendment to the CPSC's fiscal year 2014 operating plan, which passed 3-1, calls for guidance to be issued to the regulated community to ease unnecessary burdensome duplicative testing. And I quote, the commission also directs staff to draft a statement of policy that sets forth a protocol for the submission of requests for determinations of equivalency between tests administered in CPSC regulations and comparable tests administered in international standards. Such protocol at minimum will shall require requests for equivalency determinations to establish that the testing requirements of any alternative tests administered in an international standard will assure compliance with all applicable children's products, safety rules, regulations, standards or bans and are as stringent or more so, including third party testing will required as the current CPSC's testing requirements end quote. We urge the commission to revisit the aforementioned amendment. Let me conclude by again urging the commission to engage with the US negotiating team so that the TTIP outcome has regulatory coherence without sacrificing product safety. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments and suggestions. AFA looks forward to working with the commission and furthering our collaborative relationship of ensuring product safety. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Iverson. Mr. Silverberg. Good afternoon. Select lines is an online retailer of window coverings and I've made the trip from Phoenix to request for 2017 and 18 priorities to include and emphasize the need for court free legislation in the window covering industry. The reason is very simple. Window blinds with cords have killed or seriously injured on average 20 children a year. This is not new, it has been going on and has been documented since 1983, 33 years. There's no magic associated with that date. It just happens to be when this preventable hazard began being tracked. It's amazing to me that there are so many people that have no idea about these risks. I didn't know about it for years myself. A mandate to go cordless is only part of what we are requesting. We urge you to allocate sufficient funds to create, launch and maintain a public awareness campaign. Select Blinds is a small business and because of that it might be easier for us to make the move to only cordless but it doesn't take decades. We made the decision known to our suppliers in November of 2015. At that time we had targeted January 2017 as the transition timing but as soon as we announced that I knew there was no way we could wait that long. We cut the cords on March 31st of this year, five months from notice to implementation. There are now three cordless only retailers. Select Blinds.com, Target and Ikea. Select Blinds is the only retailer that is 100% cordless including custom product. Target and Ikea have limited their offering to stock or what is referred to as cut down product. Either way there was one simple reason why the three of us were able to make the change. Commitment. Select Blinds made the decision because we believe it to be the right decision. While we cannot force another retailer or the manufacturing community to follow suit, we feel with the right coordination of efforts this issue can be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned parties. Three more retailers will join the cord free commitment. Home Depot, Lowe's and Walmart. The date that I heard was January 2018. That's 19 kids, I mean 19 months from now. Although this is a significant move, it leaves all custom products out of the equation. Upgrading the cordless is not a cost prohibitive move. First of all, there are three categories that have zero cost impact. Cutters, vertical blinds and roller solar shades. These three categories account for about 30% of online sales. It's probably higher with in-home design consultants. Beyond those three categories, every blind or shade category can readily be made with a cordless lift or cord inaccessible lift. The big guys already have the technology. There are also products like the fashion wand from safety shade that transforms a corded shade to a cord inaccessible shade. Our most popular product is the cell shade or honeycomb shade. It cannot be that expensive to make them cordless. We buy a stock cordless cell shade for well under $40 on the most popular sizes. The vendor from whom we source this product is making money, I'm sure. So the real cost of an entire cordless shade including freight to get it delivered to anywhere in the lower 48 States is less than $30. That's a finished product delivered. So it can be done by every custom manufacturer. Select Blinds has made the move. We are optimizing our product assortment daily. We would be in a more competitive landscape if we had every product on our site that our competition can offer. But even so, we are succeeding as a business entity with 100% cordless self-imposed mandate. I've been in the window covering business for almost 11 years. Prior to that, I ran a company called Uniden. We were the number one market share brand in the cordless phone business. I bring this up for a few reasons. One, I understand the way to develop products. I know how to communicate with the engineers whether electrical, mechanical, or other. Two, I have been able to get products that product development teams don't believe can be brought to market from concept to mass production dozens of times. Three, new products are the lifeblood of any organization. They give the consuming public a reason to buy. This is a beautiful thing. It adds jobs in the industry. The time for discussion is over. The hope for industry self-regulation has come and gone. A mandate is needed, and that is what we are here to ask for. The industry is capable of doing this. Perhaps they just need to approach it in a new way. I'd like to suggest a mandate for all product to be cord free by January 1st, 2018. I'd like to suggest that the mandate include corroboration between retailers and manufacturers and a committee be formed by September 1st, 2016 to oversee the progress. This is needed in order to get the focus where it should be. Put my name in the mix. I'm glad to be part of it. Let's quit playing Russian roulette with the lives of our kids. Issue a mandate. Do it now. Do it before this tragedy touches one of you, one of our congressional members, or one of the key executives at the helm of a window covering company, because that eventuality is very real, and then it will be too late for you to say that the reason you are issuing a mandate is because it's the right thing to do. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak. Thank you, Mr. Silverberg, Mr. Alcorn. Good afternoon, Chair Kaye, and thank you for the opportunity to present my testimony today. My name is Ted Alcorn, and I'm the research director for Everytown for Gun Safety. Everytown is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country, with more than three million supporters and more than 100,000 donors, including moms, mayors, survivors, and everyday Americans who are fighting for public safety measures that respect the Second Amendment and help save lives. I'm here today to address the burden of injuries inflicted by children who gain access to and unintentionally discharged firearms, an area of great concern to the public, and one that the commission has authority to address, and to urge the commission to use its authority to enhance the surveillance of unintentional shootings of children. In 2013, consistent with the commission's authority to regulate safe storage devices, such as trigger locks and gun safes, the president of the United States asked the commission to review and enhance the standards for those devices. A process I understand is now underway. We know that effective, evidence-based interventions rely on a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the problem they are addressing. Unfortunately, current surveillance of unintentional shootings by children is woefully inadequate. In 2013, employing press reports in the media, every town identified 100 children, 14 and under, who died due to unintentional firearm injuries, nearly 50% more than the data, the best national data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reflect. Furthermore, even our count was limited since it did not capture incidents in which a child fired a gun but harmed someone older, nor incidents in which the victim was injured but did not die. So last year, again, using just press reports, every town created and has since maintained an open-source index of all incidents in which a minor unintentionally fired a gun and harmed or killed someone. We consult with local law enforcement to confirm the details as necessary and the data we collect are publicly available on our website, everytownresearch.org. And the patterns they illustrate could inform further approaches to reducing these injuries. In 2015, every town identified 278 unintentional child shootings, which resulted in 88 deaths and 194 injuries. As of June 1st this year, we already identified 100 and as of today, we've identified over 110 further shootings. Three-year-olds pulled the trigger more than children of any other age. And unlike shootings involving older children who typically harm another child, the vast majority of these incidents involving toddlers, the toddler shoots themself. We observe enormous variation across states in the rates of unintentional child shootings. Controlling for population Alaska experienced these tragedies 30 times more frequently than California. Most important from the standpoint of prevention, which is our goal, was the apparent role played by the responsible storage of firearms. Whereas fewer than 15% of gun-owning households with children report storing their firearms unlocked and loaded or with ammunition, those households accounted for more than two-thirds of the unintentional child shootings we observed. Though the public sometimes refers to shootings like these as accidents, a word that suggests they occur by chance, unforeseen, without reason, every town is very deliberate in describing these as not an accident. Because these tragedies are eminently preventable, if our society increasingly adopts norms of storing guns responsibly and evaluates our success at doing so. To promote that change in behavior, every town has developed public education campaign called Be Smart, which gives gun owners and non-gun owners alike a way to share information about responsible firearm storage in their communities. And organizations across the spectrum run similar programs from the Brady Centers, ask campaign to the firearm trade industries projects child safe. But to the measure the effectiveness of any individual campaign from any other organization, it's essential to have an accurate measure of the outcome of interest. The commission plays an important role estimating rates of non-fatal injuries from all types through the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, NICE. But more accurate information about unintentional child shootings will be critical for assessing the effect of current public health approaches. The commission should adopt measures to improve surveillance of unintentional child shootings through the NICE system. And the commission might also consider establishing an open source, an open source measure of these shootings. Every town's index demonstrates the reach of online media for supporting these efforts and the Bureau of Justice statistics recently adopted similar tools for tracking law enforcement involved shootings which had been undercounted previously. To be sure, one agency alone cannot solve this complex problem and other agencies must also play a role. It's essential to measure how gun storage behavior has changed over time, state by state. And the CDC ceased measuring this in 2004 when questions relating to firearm storage were dropped from their national behavioral risk factor surveillance system, BRFIS. The BRFIS coordinators should reintroduce those questions. Unintentional child shootings account for just a fraction of the tens of thousands of firearm-related injuries in the United States each year, but few cry out so strongly for prevention. Even one preventable firearm injury or death of a child is one too many and I believe the commission has an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to addressing this problem and it will save lives. Thank you, Mr. Elkhorn, Ms. Hitchcock. Good afternoon, Chairman Kay and commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to provide our thoughts regarding the commission's agenda and priorities for fiscal years 2017 and 2018. My name is Liz Hitchcock and I'm the legislative director for Safer Chemicals Healthy Families. I'm providing testimony today on behalf of my organization and Safer States. Safer Chemicals Healthy Families is a nationwide coalition representing more than 450 organizations and businesses, including parents, health professionals, advocates for people with learning and developmental disabilities, reproductive health advocates, environmentalists, organized labor and businesses from across the nation, including some groups who have already testified today. Safer States is a network of diverse environmental health coalitions and organizations in states across the country that believe families, communities, and then the environment should be protected from the devastating impacts of our society's heavy use of chemicals. Our diverse coalitions are united by our common concern about toxic chemicals in our homes and workplaces and in the products we use every day. We work for reform of our outdated toxic chemical laws, work with retailers to phase out hazardous chemicals from the marketplace and educate the public about ways to protect our families from toxic chemicals. Over the remainder of FY 2017 and 2018, we urged the commission to expand its oversight and regulation of consumer products containing harmful and environmentally harmful chemicals, making full use of its authority under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, and the other statutes enforced by the commission. In addition, we urged the commission to make it a priority to move forward with rulemaking banning consumer products containing a class of toxic flame retardant chemicals as requested in the petition submitted in June 2015 by groups including Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Earth Justice, and the International Association of Firefighters. While we appreciate the commission's work over the past several years to implement the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act's regulation of toxic lead and phthalates in children's products, the work shouldn't end there. American families are more aware than ever that toxic chemicals can be found in products in our children's play rooms, in our living rooms and kitchens, in hospitals and healthcare facilities, and in our workplaces with ongoing and irreparable harm to our family's health. The presence of toxic chemicals in childcare products and children's products is one of many exposures to hazardous chemicals that our families face as a result of contact with consumer products. The Consumer Product Safety Commission should broaden the scope of consumer products it reviews for the presence of and health risks from hazardous chemicals and then take necessary action to protect public health, accounting for the increased vulnerability of certain populations, including children and pregnant women. Thanks to state chemical reporting requirements in Maine, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state, our state partners have and will continue to produce reports identifying toxics and consumer products that we urge the commission to take note of and to begin to use its authority to protect the public from these dangerous chemicals. In 2008, the Maine legislature passed one of the first and strongest state-based chemical policy reform laws known as the Kids Safe Products Act. Under Maine's law, manufacturers must disclose their use of high priority chemicals of concern in consumer products sold in the state. In 2014, the law was expanded to require the reporting of phthalates by some manufacturers. The report linked to my written testimony, What Stinks, prepared by our partners at the Environmental Health Strategy Center, analyzes the results of that public reporting, including data on the use of phthalates showing that hormone disrupting chemicals are used in a broader range of household products than previously known. In addition to phthalates in clothing and footwear, toys and games, a total of 130 products containing four types of phthalates were reported by 14 manufacturers in household paints and primers, in cleansers, in disinfectants and deodorizers. In 2008, Washington State passed the Children's Safe Products Act, setting requirements for makers of children's products being sold in Washington to report to the state if these products contain chemicals on a list of 66 chemicals of high-concerned children. Manufacture reporting began phasing in in 2012 and in 2014, an analysis of that reporting by our partners at the Washington Toxics Coalition called What's On Your List, summarized the chemicals and products reported over a six-month period in 2013. Overall, there were 4,605 reports of such chemicals reported in children's products, such as toys, clothing, baby safety products, embedding, a total of 78 companies, such as Walmart, Target, Safeway, Walgreens, and Toys R Us reported products containing hazardous chemicals, a total of 49 chemicals such as formaldehyde, bisphenol A, parabens, phthalates, heavy metals, and industrial solvents were reported with health effects that include carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, and developmental or reproductive toxicity. We anticipate that manufacturer reported data required by the 2014 Vermont law will become available later this year. Manufacturers of products for children under 12 are required to report the presence of 66 chemicals of concern down to the individual product level, and this new level of data will provide valuable information that will help prioritize products and categories of products for review. The commission should use the data generated by these state programs as a roadmap to additional products that require further evaluation and potential action to protect the health of children from these dangerous chemicals. In addition, we urge the commission to exercise its authority under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act to ban products containing toxic chemical flame retardants. In spite of the fact that these chemicals have been associated with serious human health problems, including cancer, reduced sperm count, increased time to pregnancy, impaired memory, learning deficits, hormone disruption, lowered immunity, they continue to be used at high levels in consumer products. The comments and testimony previously submitted to the commission by our partners provide a strong basis for moving forward with the requested rulemaking. These chemicals migrate continuously out from everyday household products into the air and dust when we sit on a sofa or put a baby to sleep on a crib's mattress. As a result, more than 97% of US residents have measurable quantities of toxic organohalogen flame retardants in their blood. Children are particularly at risk because they come into greater contact with household dust than adults. Studies show that children who's developing brains and reproductive organs are the most vulnerable have three to five times higher levels than their parents. In conclusion, we urge you to act on the petition to regulate products containing toxic chemical flame retardants and to consider action to restrict dangerous chemical exposures from other consumer products. We again thank the commission for this opportunity to comment on your future activities and priorities, and we look forward to continuing to work with you on your important mission. Thank you, Ms. Ichka, Dr. Fox Rawlings. Thank you for the opportunity, Chairman and commissioners. I'm speaking today on behalf of our president, Dr. Diana Zuckerman, who cannot be here today. The National Center for Health Research is a nonprofit research center staffed by scientists, medical professionals, and health experts who analyze and review research on a range of health issues. We respect the essential role that the CPSC has as well as the challenges that you face in selecting the most important priorities. Thalates and flame retardants need to be among your top priorities because they are in all of our homes and they migrate from products into our daily environment. Multiple thalate metabolites and flame retardants are detectable in nearly all people in the U.S. And scientists agree that their impact on health can be dangerous and long-lasting. First, most, so these two topics have been discussed very many times today, so I'm gonna be very brief in our comments. So first I wanna talk about the additional bands on thalates and children's toys and care products. We applaud the current permanent and temporary bands on six thalates and children's toys and child care articles. However, these bands need to be extended. The previous rule proposed last year, last spring in 2015, following the CHAP recommendations would provide additional protections against children. We support the permanent bands on four additional thalates, D-I-B-P, D-P-E-N-P, D-H-E-X-P and D-C-H-P, and making permanent the intern band on D-I-N-P. However, the CHAP report also recommended an intern band on D-I-O-P, which should also be included in the rule. We strongly disagree with the proposal to lift the intern bands on D-N-O-P and D-I-D-P. Well, they may not be associated with anti-androgenicity. They are associated with organ toxicity and altered development. The CHAP report also recommended additional studies on three other phalates, D-M-P, D-P-H-P and D-E-P, and six thalate alternatives, and the final rule should include a timeline for the completion of these studies. In summary, we strongly urge the CPSC to finalize the proposed rule on thalates in children's toys and child care articles, including consideration of our safety concerns. It is also important for the CPSC to expand this work on thalates to include safeguards for older children. There's increasing evidence for the impact of these chemicals on early puberty, which itself is associated with drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and suicide. Nick's band's on flame retardants. The CPSC has the responsibility and the ability to protect consumers from toxic flame retardants under the Federal Hazardous Substance Act. We agree with other groups commenting today that the CPSC should propose and finalize regulations that would ban additive non-polymeric organohalagen flame retardants in four categories of household products as proposed in potential number HP15-1. Like thalates, these chemicals move from products into our daily environment, and from there into consumers' bodies where they can cause irreparable harm. All of the organohalagen flame retardants studied have been associated with chronic health effects. The most well-studied organohalagen flame retardants are the PBDEs, which have been phased out due and part to the effects on human health. The alternatives in the same class are proving to have similar problems. These alternatives are found in a large percentage of people tested in various communities. They have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, developmental toxicity, endocrine disruptor, and behavioral changes in models and or humans. We strongly urge the CPSC to develop and finalize a ban on these chemicals and propose residential products to protect consumers from their toxic effects. In conclusion, we urge the CPSC to prioritize the research and rulemaking to limit exposure of consumers, and especially children, from phallus and flame retardants that have been found to negatively impact health and development. We look forward to working with you on these issues. Thank you for your time and consideration of our views. Thank you, Dr. Fox-Rollings. I'll just start my round of questioning with you and Ms. Hitchcock, and I don't know if you hear earlier when Mr. Pinchina from the breast cancer fund was speaking, I'll reiterate my concern at the public policy level. Before I came to the commission, I remember when our first child was born to scare about BPA and Ms. Hitchcock, you mentioned BPA on the list, and so everybody scrambled to take BPA out of their products, and as parents, you started looking for BPA-free labels, and I remember going around looking, and you would have this sense of relief if you saw something that didn't say BPA on it, you're like, we're safe, and that's really the key, is that parents think if a chemical is taken out, then everything's okay, and then of course, lo and behold, not surprisingly, PPS apparently was substituted, and there are concerns about what BPS means, and that's really at the root of my dilemma in this position and the way I approach it is, I wanna make sure whatever I'm participating in is definitively making people safer when it comes to chemical exposure, and so, and again, I'd like to avoid TOSCA reform because I think that's a separate issue to some extent, just as we consider whether it's issues that are currently in front of us or new chemical-related issues, how do we have assurance from a scientific perspective that if we take action against a chemical or a class of chemicals, that we are definitively making people safer as opposed to just definitively acting against that chemical? I think that's the $64,000 question, although with inflation, who knows how big a question I've just asked. You're absolutely right to be concerned about regrettable substitutions of the next chemical in line, and BPA and BPS are a very good example. We have lacked a comprehensive chemicals policy. We have, the Congress has just passed and the President has on his desk a reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act, which you've said you're avoiding, so I won't dive any farther in, but we do have concern about substitutions and we have concern about rational substitutions. There are, though, chemicals that we have a large body of scientific evidence that they cause harm and we need to take action and I move us into the flame retardant's world. Where we have a large volume of scientific evidence to act upon these chemicals, let's do the thing that we know is the right thing to do. Let's guard against regrettable substitutions and let's remain attentive and vigilant about the next thing coming down and hopefully we will begin to review new chemicals coming onto the market more carefully, but we ask the commission to act under its authorities to take action on the things that we already know and take action to remove these chemicals that we know are causing harm from everyday consumer products that our children are coming into contact with. Thank you, Doctor. You want to add anything? I pretty much would say the same thing. I think as much as we would like to avoid regrettable substitution, in some ways there's not much we can do unless we can specify testing before chemicals go on the market. So just saying replacing this bad chemical, we may get another bad chemical as a very big problem and so even though we might get something else as bad, we have to stay on top of it, we have to study it, but we can't keep allowing that to allow bad chemicals that are causing harm in the marketplace. And thank you for that. I just find it just the whole public policy apparatus very frustrating because for the children that are harmed by whatever this generation's wave of chemicals are, they're harmed and that harm is very unlikely to be undone and we learn at their expense and there has to be a better way to do it. Mr. Alcorn, thank you for coming in. I just have to ask briefly since we've not had your presence before or your organization's presence before, I'm just curious how you even heard that we're having a priorities hearing. Well, we have been working on this issue for almost 10 years now as an organization, but as I said, we began tracking the unintentional child shootings most closely in 2013 and as it's become an issue of greater concern amongst the volunteers that we have around the country, the volunteer indicated that this was a hearing that would be important to communicate some of our findings at. Got it, that's good to know. And as we mentioned in the beginning this morning, we're eager to have more robust participation so it's good to know that the word is getting out. On the issue of gun containers and gun locks, when as you mentioned, the vice president did reach out and asked the commission to take a role in it and so we did and we engaged experts and we asked the ASTM leadership to reopen the standards which they did and then what ended up happening, I don't know if you participated in it at all, it turns out there's really, as far as we could tell, basically there's only one or two people in the entire country who can truly figure out how to defeat these devices in such a way as to show how much the standard has to improve. They participated for a while in the standards process. Everybody came together, CPSC staff was there. They promised to offer suggestions and then they just sort of disappeared and the frustration is that we didn't have anyone else the technical expertise who could look at these two standards and say this is what needs to happen and what was fascinating about these two individuals and I went out and met with them in South Dakota a few years ago is that they still retained the innocence and the creativity of the way a child can look at a product in a way to defeat it and they would see a product and a mechanism or weigh into that item in a way an adult wouldn't think about. We put limitations on our way of thinking. We have most of us as some of us hopefully have reality imposing some type of burden on us and these guys somehow still had that child-like approach and so they just had a unique way of doing it and that's a very long-winded way of saying if you know anyone else who has expertise in gun locks and gun safes who can participate in the ASTM process that would be very helpful. I think that the map forward from my perspective was to update those two standards and then go to California and engage the state of California and see if they were willing to actually adopt the ASTM standards as well which would de facto make it nationwide and I'm sure as I mentioned that Commissioner Morales is gonna ask about a poster furniture during his time but I do think that that would be a critical step to updating those two standards because having done the work on it they are inadequate from a technical standpoint. They just don't provide the level of protection that I think is needed so please reach out to my office if you have technical experts who can participate in that. I'd appreciate that. I'd be happy to do so. Thank you, Mr. Silverberg. Thank you so much for coming. What's the secret? We've been hearing for decades, not thankfully I have not been alive that long at least in this capacity but the agency has been hearing for decades this is an unsolvable problem that can't happen and even for those who are willing to switch over it's gonna take years and years and this is very technically difficult and impossible to provide consumer choice yet somehow you had these magical conversations with your suppliers who I assume are available to other companies as suppliers. What did you do that made a difference that others have not been able to figure out? I drew a line in the sand. There's not a house in the United States that cannot be covered with window coverings cordless. Period. And still maintain consumer choice and do it so in an economical way? Absolutely. There's stock product right now that's cordless available. There's custom product right now that's cordless available and I'm not sure what the reasoning is to talk about stock product only. Custom product is more easily configured by the manufacturer here in the US or the fabricator here in the US and so it's not a cost issue. All the engineering resources of the manufacturers were put to this challenge it would be solved so quickly. There are products that are available today as I said that have no cost impact whatsoever to the consumer that are available cordless or corded at the same price. Engineers can do amazing things. They really can. You give them, in fact they prefer to be challenged on a daily basis. It is fulfilling for them in their career and to continue to build the same product with only changing colors or changing sizes it can't be self-fulfilling for an engineer. I don't get it, Chairman. I just don't get it. It can be done, it should be done and it's not a cost prohibitive venture. Well I share your belief in the ingenuity and the creativity of industry and I'm optimistic that like you said with the right mindset we can get there. This has been one of the highest priorities that I've brought to this position from my perspective because it is solvable it hasn't been going on so long and I think enough is enough. Are you available if the industry does reopen the standard to participate in that and lend your expertise? Absolutely. I'd be glad to do it. Thank you. And as I was saying with my last few seconds I was just curious to know how large a statue did you remember as erect in honor of Commissioner Morozovic for his GCC proposal that he put through? And I was here turning off people's microphones and I forgot to turn my own on it. We just had Commissioner Morozovic at our product safety east conference in New York and that was really a great opportunity as I mentioned before for the commission really to convey the mission to our members and hear feedback. So obviously we welcome everyone here to participate in further events with AAFA. Thank you. Great, thank you for that. Commissioner Robinson. Thank you. Mr. Alcorn, I'm gonna start with you and just focus on something different in your presentation. I know I'm not alone in being thoroughly disgusted at the gun deaths in this country and the graph yesterday in the New York Times that brought home what we all sort of know but I don't know if you saw it or not but literally the US is 500% higher than the next closest country in terms of gun deaths in this country. And I know your organization as I understand it's focused on gun violence and obviously this agency is more focused on what can be done. We have very limited jurisdiction. But obviously the only thing we could ever no matter what do is address accidental deaths. It doesn't take very long in government to appreciate how outrageous the ways are in which the hands of government agencies have been tied with respect to making guns safer even with gathering data about gun deaths. Our hands are tied. As one commentator recently said we regulate toys so why not guns? Our restriction from Congress comes first in defining a consumer product which does not include firearms or ammunition and then we're specifically directed that we shall make no ruling or order that restricts the manufacturer's sale of firearms, firearms ammunition or components of firearms ammunition including black powder or gun powder for firearms and we're the Consumer Product Safety Commission but it is what it is. But I thank you for what you're doing and I agree with you that the data are absolutely critical and they're tough to find. And I know you're using press reports. I know a couple years ago, I guess it was back in 2013 the New York Times, again I'm sure you saw I did the study of kids involved in deaths with guns that were labeled as homicides rather than accidents so that the numbers that were being used by associations like the NRA to argue that there wasn't a problem were half what the real numbers were because of this misnomer of what happens when even an infant shoots a baby they were labeling it as homicide. So the focus of your presentation as I read it was on our NICE system so I just wanted to tell you a couple things. First of all we, all of us here appreciate that the NICE system is the gold standard but it's still less than a hundred emergency departments at hospitals in the United States. But our NICE coding manual does include separate codes for gun locks and gun safes and we collect the product information that's publicly available and searchable on those products. However, we also collect incident data that involves unintentional shootings through NICE but we don't make it public because of our restriction in consumer products not including firearms. So we do gather that data and we gather both for intentional and unintentional shootings for the CDC and we've been doing that since 1993 per an interagency agreement and as I understand it we receive about 3,500 reports a year and the CPSC cannot release that. However, the CDC has releases it on the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research. So if you haven't heard of that which I hadn't until I read your presentation and checked out what we gather you might wanna check that out because I'm told that 22% of the firearm cases collected are classified as unintentional. So that may be something that your organization might be able to use and anything that you get by way of data that might be useful for us we would appreciate you sharing that with us as well. Mr. Silberberg, thank you, thank you thank you for going 100% cordless. Certainly I think all of us appreciate that that technology's there that it's not expensive. We could do it, but it's been decades that we've been trying to get industry to adopt a voluntary standard. Do you ask for a mandate? I'm sure you know that for us to do a mandatory standard is a Herculean task, particularly in this area where there are so many cords and I am delighted to hear that you respond to the chair's question that you would participate if we were to open the standard again. Have you done so in the past? Have you participated in any voluntary standard? I have not. Good, okay. But I'll grow my hair. I don't mean good that you haven't, I mean good that you have. I'll grow my hair to take on that Herculean effort. So I'm delighted that you will do that, particularly with respect to a hidden hazard like this. Ms. Hitchcock, I know you know that we're gonna be receiving a package on phthalates and the non-polymeric additive organohalogens petition that was and we should be receiving that shortly. You have said that you think the commission should broaden the scope of consumer products that it reviews for the presence and risk of hazardous chemicals and I'm just curious as to whether you know of any specific products or product categories that you think that we should be reviewing that we're not reviewing. In my testimony I linked to two reports from our state partners in Maine and in Washington state where they are reviewing the results of the reporting under their state laws and I'm looking at a chart here where they found chemicals of concern in children's clothing and footwear, in toys which obviously you're obviously focused on. We also found tableware in personal care products, and in cleansers, in items found in the kitchen. So we would look to those reports to find the additional products that aren't covered as children's products or for a child under the age of 12. So those are product categories. Are you aware of chemical categories that we are not considering that we should be considering? I'm happy to hear that you're considering a flame retardant's petition. There are additional chemical categories like formaldehyde, parabens, other flame retardants and other phthalates beyond those covered under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. In the category of phthalates, yeah. Okay, and I'd be interested in both yours and Dr. Fox Rowling's comments on whether, I hope that you reviewed our very robust hearing on the group, on the petition for the non-polymeric organohalogens that are additive and in four product categories as I'm sure you know. But I guess I'd be interested in your comments since you were not at that hearing on whether you think that that's an appropriate categorization because this is new for us to look at a whole category of flame retardants. It seems fairly reasonable to me. I mean, yeah, it's a very big category in some cases, but from what's been studied and the characteristics of those chemicals, it looks like there is a very reasonable chance that the characteristics seen in a good portion of these are going to expand to the rest of them. And by being able to look at a whole category like this, we can avoid the regrettable substitution like we're seeing with some of the phthalates and with the BPAs and BPS. So I think it is reasonable. So let me follow up with if we limit this to the four categories that are in the petition which are durable infant and toddler products, residential upholstered furniture, mattresses and mattress pads and plastic casings of electronic devices. My question is are either of you aware in those four product categories of any safe non-polymeric additive organohalogens? I'm deferring my, okay. I just, and if you don't know that's fine, I just. I can't go into any of the details right now. I can definitely look into the research and let you know, but I know there are alternatives for flame retardants that are safer for, as far as I've been able to understand most categories of consumer products. And a lot of these can, the standards can still be met with even non-flame retardants. So I'm not sure for specifics on which ones require those types of flame retardants. Okay, thank you. And Ms. Iverson, nice to see you again. I'm sure you know that we're not participating in TTIP and we have no intention in doing so because unlike some of our sister agencies, we don't have any mission related to trade. So that's the reason we're not participating. But my question of you is have you approached any of our European Union counterparts to see their attitude about harmonizing because we would love to harmonize but we're not gonna harmonize down, as you know. Yes, I do know that. So I've read some of the commissions work and I know that that's a major concern in the area of watering down standard. So we are working with our European partners and I know that this is gonna be a really important task and I know that it's gonna be difficult and that the commission has already looked into this. So we continue to work on both sides but I can say that as I mentioned in my testimony, European regulators are signaling that there's gonna be a textile provision in the next round. So I understand that the CPSC has no intention of working in this area but there are areas of regulatory coherence that we think you can be a part of. So. Good, good. And I just, all of us supported Commissioner Mohorovic's proposal. As you know, with respect to the enforcement policy and I thank you for your work with him on this common sense proposal. Thank you and I thank the commission for that as well. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson, Commissioner Berkel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all of our panelists for being here today and for taking the time out to provide your insights into these very important issues. Dr. Fox Rawlings, in your testimony, well it's actually it, Diana, Dr. Zuckerman. On the bottom of the first page, it says it's important for CPSC to expand its work on phthalates to include safeguards for older children. There is increasing evidence of the impact of these chemicals on early puberty, which itself is associated with drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and suicide. Can you provide us with that research that's been done in those numbers that you're referring to here? I cannot, but I can talk to Diana and have that sent to you. Very good, okay, I appreciate that, thank you. We did hear in the comments with regards to phthalates, the regrettable substitutes and the concerns for substituting one known entity and one known chemical with another one that we don't know anything about. But as you well know that the phthalates package is being worked on by our staff. It is extremely complex. There were several, as you know, many, many comments on it. They're working on, working through those comments and it's a process and we expect to see that package hopefully by the end of this fiscal year. So thank you for your concerns and your thoughts on the phthalate issue. Mr. Silverberg, before I have a couple of questions for you, I do wanna say something because both of my colleagues have said this and I want to make sure that the information out there is accurate. So we may have heard that it can't be done but I don't think we're hearing that now. I think that industry has made it clear to the agency that the technology exists, it's available, consumers have a choice and it can be done. And the question is how do we find a way forward? So that may have been the issue a few years ago but now the issue, I think there's no dispute that the technology is available. And this isn't directed at you, this is directed at my colleagues that we did hear that in the past but since I've been here, I've heard from industry and as I mentioned this morning, I've been to the three major manufacturers of them and they are willing, interested and able to produce cordless products and certainly products with inaccessible cords and that's very important to what we're talking about here today. When you made the change, can you talk to us about what happened to the price of the blind? Absolutely, it went up, it cost more. In some cases it cost a little more, in some cases it cost not much more than a little more but based on the price of the product to begin with the ratio of the upcharge was such that it put us in an uncompetitive position. That's easily rectified by mass production of cordless blinds. With volume comes efficiencies and cost reduction and so if the manufacturers have to make them all cordless, you will see the cost come down dramatically very quickly. Okay, that is certainly an acceptable theory, right? That when we do things in mass production the price comes down but I think the difference in, Commissioner Robinson continues to say this, that we for section nine rulemaking have extremely difficult obstacles to overcome and I think what's key here in your testimony and your being here and the decision you made is a business decision that you made, a commendable one but you made the decision and that's different than having it be imposed on you and so I think you should be commended for making that decision and it was a business decision you made so I just wanna point that out. I do wanna emphasize that the technology is available. I don't think there's any dispute. Major manufacturers have made that clear and now the question is how do we find a way forward to get to a voluntary standard that addresses this issue so that's all I have, Mr. Chairman, I thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Buerkle, Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you panelists for appearing today especially new participants so it's always good to see other associations with interests that recognize that it's important to visit with the CPSC and Mr. Silverberg, thank you for your long travel. If you could engage me, I'm not as, forgive me, I'm not as familiar with selectblinds.com. You mentioned you're an online retailer. Have you always been an online retailer? Yes. You have for the 11 years, I think you've been in business. Do you sell to subcontractors and contractors or is it a direct-to-consumer business? It's primarily direct-to-consumer but we do have a dealer division which is suffering more than the general part of the business. What percent of your business do you think is direct-to-consumer?  Now, you made the decision to go cordless in November of 2015. Tell me about that decision-making.  Is it, tell me a little bit about that moment that you decided, look, we're gonna make a business decision and we're gonna go completely cordless. I drove it 100%. I have understood that window-blind cords were killing kids when I heard the first recall or retrofit on Roman shades. Right. And coming from an industry where I was cutting the cords previously in consumer electronics with telephones. Yeah. Right, I've been cutting the cords my whole life. But I don't know what the trigger was that hit me so hard, but it just really impacted me that we were selling a product that is dangerous to kids. CPSC, compliant product, is killing kids still. And I just couldn't get up in the morning, look myself in the eye in the mirror and go to work knowing that we were selling a product that's dangerous to kids. These are innocence. It's our responsibility to give them the most safe environment that we possibly can. And to cut the cord is not cost prohibitive and what parent wouldn't pay $20 or $30 or $40 more a window to make sure they have a safe product for their children. Right. Yeah, if they were aware of the hazard too, right? And appreciated it. And that's why I say that an education program is also necessary to go hand in hand with this because even if we decided today that not another corded blind will be sold, there's 140 or million households in the US, 150 million households in the US, it's gonna take a long time to cycle through all those products. But we have to start somewhere, we have to start someday. And we just made the decision that we're not gonna wait any longer. And we started March 31st because April 1st was April Fool's Day and I didn't want any confusion in the industry that we were playing a joke. And April was a tough month for us, I'll admit it. But in May, we actually had a higher revenue number than we did in May last year. So it's not 100% detrimental to any business. Yeah, you mentioned that it does put you at a competitive disadvantage, but you've been able to thrive still in a cordless environment. Absolutely. And the one category that we've been the most successful in which is honeycomb or cellular shades, we have been working with our manufacturers on making them cordless for us for years. And we have a very small surcharge for the cordless solution on those. But the reality is there are additional solutions necessary to make every window cordless accessible. Because some are hard to reach, some are behind furniture, some people are not able to reach high enough to get the window shade all the way open. And motorization is an example of a technology that will address any window, but it's gonna take more work to get the motorization cost down. That is an expensive proposition today, but it doesn't have to be. Motorization is, it's a radio. We make radio frequency products available at reasonable prices in many categories of products, including cordless phones, which nobody buys them anymore because everyone has a cell phone. But remote control for your TV, remote control for your lights, remote control for your thermostat, we remote control everything. Just watch out for those button cell batteries in there, right? Exactly. So in November of 2015, did you come to the conclusion that all corded window blinds present an unreasonable risk of injury or death? I came to the conclusion that it is not possible to determine from our side what is or is not reasonable to expect from a cordless or corded product in the home use. And the only way to be sure that the expectation is met, that the blind will be safe is to sell it without a cord. And you've got, with 95% of your sales, you've got direct ability to contact all of your, everybody who has purchased corded blinds from you. Over a million customers.  We email them on a weekly basis. We have educated them as much as we can. We have implemented a go cordless initiative where we have committed to completely retrofit one home a month for any family that submits a story that is going to give us the feeling that they're the most deserving of anybody who submits their request to have us make their home all cordless. A previous customer. A previous, no, a new customer. Any new customer too. And we take this very seriously. Before we went all cordless, we offered every consumer, any consumer that wanted a cord cleat for every window in their house. We sent them out for free. But cord cleats are not the answer. Cord cleats are just earlier this year, a kid was strangled by a cord cleat blind that was properly wrapped and it didn't prevent the tragedy. Have you, have you plans to recall your corded product with CPSC through a fast track recall? No. Why not in terms of commitment? I recognize some of your language and I know it's rhetoric to be, to have the best possible impact. And let me ask you one quick question first.  It was intentional. It was intentional, okay, I thought so. It wasn't missed on me. But you did mention that we're playing Russian roulette with children and you've sold corded product to family. You have the ability to reach them and to offer them a repair, a recall, or a refund. And I'm just curious how you can make that commitment and yet not want to offer them without charge your cordless product. Well, you know I could do that but I would be out of business pretty quickly, right? If I gave everybody free blinds. But I appreciate the comment and I do take it to heart and it is something that we've thought about and we are actually working very hard to come up with what is the right financial model where we can offer a discount to such a degree that anybody can replace their corded blind with a cordless blind.  I don't know if that will work, we have to run the models but we also have to stay in business. I recognize that. Right and we don't want to put the American consumer out of business and I think one of the things that's missed in a lot of regulatory consideration is how regressive regulation is. It disproportionately impacts low income folks in terms of price points, whether it's table saws or cordless product in terms of price point increases. And if you believe that we should mandate only cordless blinds by regulation, do you also think that we should tolerate corded blind in the marketplace or should we in fact along the same rationale recall all corded blinds in the United States? How could one tolerate corded blinds in the marketplace that present a risk if one believes that risk is there and yet at the same time justify a mandatory standard? It's been done for decades. Look at the auto industry seatbelts. We didn't recall cars. We didn't retrofit cars. They worked their way through. What about the third brake light in the window? We didn't call all the cars back in. We didn't say you had to retrofit your cars. It just happens to take time and eventually what you see on the street is a car that is meeting the standards and not seeing cars that don't meet the standards and the same thing has to happen in window blinds. Thank you. Thank you for your candor. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you to the panel. Dr. Fox-Rolling, Ms. Hitchcock, Mr. Alcorn, Mr. Silverberg, Ms. Iverson. We appreciate your testimony coming here today. Just a few other items as we wrap up. I do want to remind folks who may be paying attention online or of course who are here that we will keep the record open for one week. So for any of the information that may have been requested or any additional information that folks would like to provide the agency, please do so. I do want to acknowledge for the record we did receive additional written comments from folks who were not able to testify. I do want to mention who they are. The Iowa ATV Injury Prevention Task Force, Earth Justice and a coalition of organizations along with them, Public Citizen, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Zippo Manufacturing, the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, Outdoor Industry Association, the National Retail Federation, the Toy Industry Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council. We all did go through their testimony very closely and we're pleased to have them submit that. And finally, I do want to acknowledge our executive director and her staff for office of the secretary. Thank you Todd for the work that you did and for a facilities office and everybody for making this happen. We very much appreciate everything that goes into it. It was seamless and that is because of the staff work behind the scenes that made it all work. So thank you very much for those who attended who submitted testimony who watched online. This concludes this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.


Hi, my name is Jean Beer, and I use she, her pronouns, and I am a recipient of a special session scholarship for new students for this fall semester of 2022. And I just want to thank the entire committee and everyone involved in the scholarship process for giving me this opportunity. I'm so excited to get started on the MLIS degree. I currently live in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and I am a teacher librarian at an international school that's just getting started with having a library for the first time. You can see my library behind me. But it will be really nice to actually have the professional education that goes along with my job in order to be able to better support my students and my school community. My presentation was about third culture kids and serving this international student community in the library, and it was really inspired by my students and also my son, who's three years old, and was born here in the Netherlands. So he's also a third culture kid, if you will. I'm really, really excited about getting started on my classes. I'm actually taking open class starting next week, so I can't wait to start joining this community. Thank you so much again.


QuickBooks Online 2023, e-commerce inventory, Excel first in, first out, or FIFO practice problem part number one. Get ready to earn the skills needed to boost your bank books on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Here we are in our QuickBooks Online test company file using the account view as opposed to the business view. You can toggle between the two views by going to the cog up top and switching the view down below, duplicating some tabs to put reports in like we do every time, right-click in the tab up top to duplicate it, right-click in the duplicated tab to duplicate it. Back to the middle tab, reports on the left. We want that balance sheet report. Go into the tab to the right, reports on the left. This time we want the P and L, the profit and loss report. Scroll up, close the hamburger, change the range. This time let's go from 0401 and let's go to 24 to 053124 and then we'll run that one. Nothing's in it. That's thus far. That's what we want. Middle tab, closing the hamburger, the same range. We're going to go from 0401 to 4 to 053124 and run that one. Let's tab to the left. Now we're going to imagine ourselves in that e-commerce situation selling inventory but not on ground in a store but rather online in the cloud with the help and use of third party applications for example being like a Shopify or an Amazon. Accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files, and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. In prior presentations we talked about decoupling the sales side from the inventory side using a periodic instead of perpetual inventory system and we thought about how to pull in the revenue side of things. Now we're talking about the inventory and cost of goods sold side of things. Last practice problem we did a cash based system where we're trying to just expense the inventory as we purchase it. Now we want to do a flow assumption and we're going to be using an external worksheet to help us with the flow assumption. So in other words the third party platform like the Shopify or like the Amazon will possibly help us out to know the number of units that we currently have on hand meaning the units will decrease by product as we sell them and we're going to have to increase and make sure to track the units on the storefront in essence so that we can logistically meet the needs of having the inventory necessary to cover the future sales. However usually we don't have the capacity here to then value it in terms of dollars and figure out the cost of goods sold and whatnot because that usually takes a flow assumption of some kind and then on the QuickBooks side of things we're not going to pull in all the data so that we can do a perpetual inventory system but rather we're just going to adjust our inventory periodically possibly at the end of each month would be a common type of system. If we were to do that properly we really would need to have a flow assumption like a first in first out or weighted average. We're going to start with a first in first out type of flow assumption and we'll just build it in our Excel worksheet. So here's going to be our Excel worksheet. We'll do a similar kind of set of processes where we purchase items that we did on the cash based system but then we'll periodically deal with the cost of goods sold at the end of the months for example. Alright so let's format this worksheet. I'm going to put my cursor on the triangle right click and format the sales and let's go to currency bracketed negative numbers. Let's go no dollar sign. Let's keep the decimals this time so we'll be dealing with pennies this time. We'll close this out. I'm going to zoom in. I'll put my cursor up here to zoom in to make sure I'm still on a one. We're at 235 so that looks good on the zoom in. Now there's a couple different ways you can kind of put together like a first in first out flow type of schedule. This is one method that I'll put together so that we can try to track it in a table format that hopefully we can sort quite easily and just add data to as we go. It's a little bit tedious. Most inventory methods are but it works here. So let's check it out. Let's title it first in first out. And that's otherwise known as FIFO FIFO is the method that we will be using. And let's go ahead and make this black and white as is our headers typically.  These aren't maybe not the best descriptions on some of them but description let's call this product and this is going to be the units in and unit price. All right so that's going to be the amount of the items that are coming in. I'm going to color these like differently so we can see the difference between the two. Select these and I'll make this a green for example. Let's do it like this and maybe green and white. And then over here with the with the amounts that are going out when we make sales we're going to call it the date out total number sold units out and then cost and that's going to be when we're selling the items which will figure out on a periodic system not as of each sales item which we'll talk about shortly. Let's make that a different color let's make that like this color and it's like brown or orange is brown and then I'm going to call this the unit balance and ending inventory or something like that. Let's make these blue and I'll go here and make this like a dark blue maybe something like that blue and white. Let's check the spelling on it and it's spelled correctly spell check must be broken that can't be right. Let's go ahead and highlight all of these. Let's wrap the text so I'm going to go up top home tab and alignment wrap it and then I'll center it so that we can see these items more clearly so that looks pretty good for our starting point. So this first half is going to be on the purchasing side and then we're going to count our inventory periodically and record the cost of goods sold or sales of the decrease in the units and then we'll have our unit balance and our ending inventory in dollars is the general idea. So let's kind of build this worksheet as we go and we can kind of think through it as we go here. So if we go through the same thought process we would be saying OK here's my Shopify store I've got my products I'm going to buy the products that I need I'm going to look for the number of units that I think are going to be necessary in order to cover the sales and let's say we start off with the number of units that we think are necessary at what did we say product product one we're going to buy two of them to start off with. So this is going to happen on four one I'm going to have to format this date sale in a date range again. So I'm going to put my cursor on the A column. I can go to the number group and format it with a short date this way. But I like to right click and I'm going to get rid of the year so I can make it a generic problem and format this. I'm in the date area and I have this three four without the year. That's the one I'm going to use. And so I'm going to say this happened on four one and let's say the total purchased. We're going to say two. I'm just referencing the total that was purchased because I'm going to put them on the books one at a time. But I think this kind of helps us to see the grouping of when the purchase has happened. So in other words this is going to be the product which is going to be I'm just going to call it product one very generic. And then I'm going to say that the units are always just going to be one. I'm just going to put them on the books one at a time. In other words we're just going to put them on the books one at a time. And actually I don't think I need the decimals. Let's select the whole thing and remove the decimals. I think I've rounded everything. It won't let me do it anymore. Select these without the date range and remove the decimals. That might clean it up a little bit. And then the unit price I'm going to say is 20. Now instead of multiplying out the 20 times the two units, I'm going to put them both on the books because that's going to help us to filter a little bit more easily. So I'm in essence just going to copy this and put it down here to show that we bought two of them at the 20. So we paid a total of the $40. So this will make more sense once we start to get into the sorting side of the problem. On our side in QuickBooks, I'm just going to do the same thing we did last time, which is basically just enter it as a cash type of transaction. Whenever we make a purchase, which might happen through the bank feeds, but that would basically create an expense form. So we'll do the same thing. I'll just say like vendor one. And this happened on 05 or 04, 01, 2, let's say, 24. And we're going to say it's going to go to cost of goods sold. And I'm just going to write in here that it was for the amount of $40, $40. Same thing, $40. And actually, it's not going to cost a good sold this time. However, it's going to go into the inventory account. So now we're going to put all of our purchases in inventory and reduce the inventory periodically. So I'm going to say this is going to be inventory, not cost a good sold inventory. And there we have it. So this is going to decrease the checking account. The other side is going into inventory. Let's save it and close it, go to my forms and check it out. We're going to say run it. So now we decreased inventory. And the other side is going to, I'm sorry, we decreased the checking account. And the other side is going into inventory assets. Nothing is happening over on the income statement. We're doing more of the accrual component here, but we don't have the supporting documentation in QuickBooks, the way we would if we were doing a perpetual inventory system, because that supporting information is over here in our Excel worksheet. OK, so then let's imagine time is passing, sales are happening. But as the sales happen, I'm not recording an adjustment as the sales happen. That would be a perpetual inventory system. But rather, we're just going to adjust this at the end of the month. So sales are happening. I'm looking at my information in my Shopify, which is going up when I make the purchases, because I'm adding the units to reflect the units when I make the purchases. And then Shopify, in essence, would be decreasing them when we sell them on a perpetual inventory system basis for units, but not for the dollar amount. They're not tracking the dollar amount on a first in, first out, generally. They're just going, but they will give us a track of the inventory, in essence, because we're increasing the inventory when we purchase it. And then they're going to automatically decrease it when the sales happen. So we're going to keep on making our adjustments to try to satisfy what we think needs to be sold within the month to meet the sales needs. So let's imagine then that we're making another purchase on during the month of 4, 4, 15 April. We're going to say on 4, 15, we purchased another one of these. And it's going to be, once again, product one, product one. And we purchased one unit. It's always going to be, I'm going to put it on these books one at a time, but this time it costs $22. That's where the issue comes in in kind of our first in, first out system. And we're going to imagine that we purchased on 4, 15, two units of product two, product two. So now I've got product two in the same area here. And I'm going to say that we purchased, and I'm going to put them on the books one at a time, right? One unit at a time, even though I purchased two of them. And we're going to say that product two costs $105, we said. And then I'm going to copy that and put that here. So we've got two of these items that were purchased at 105. So we're going to spend 210 for product number two. And then we're also going to say that we had product number three on 4, 15. And we're going to say that we purchased how many of those four of product number three. And so I'm just going to call it product three. But I'm going to put them on the books one at a time. And they cost $650 currently. So I'm going to copy that down, copy to four more cells so that we have four of these put on the books one at a time at a unit cost of 650. If I add the four units that comes up to the 2600. So hopefully I got that all correct here. So that means everything that we purchased on 415, if we purchased it from the same vendor even though we purchased these three different products would add up because these are all the unit costs one at a time to that 2832, 2832. So let's imagine we purchased that from the same vendor. And we're just going to say let's stock up on that. And I could just imagine that goes through my bank feeds. And I'm going to say let's make an expense form. And we'll say it's for vendor one again, let's say. And this happens on 041524. And we're just going to put it into inventory instead of cost of goods sold. But other than that, it's much the same process we did last time within the current month because we're purchasing as we need it. And I'm just going to put the lump sum that once again came to 2832. So we'll say 2832. And so this is going to increase inventory, decrease the checking account. So let's say, all right, save it and close it. And over here, balance sheet, checking account goes down. Inventory goes up. Nothing is happening over here to the cost of goods sold. Even those sales have been happening during the month of April. And on the sales side, the sales would be pulled in using the method we talked about in prior presentations because we decoupled the sales half of the transaction from the cost and inventory half. And the related costs that goods sold will be updated periodically at the end of the month after we do our physical kind of count at the end of the month. And then in Shopify, we saw the inventory going down in terms of units. And we're going to update the inventory for each of the units within our online store so that it can keep tracking on just a physical unit basis, even though it's not generally tracking in terms of a cash flow assumption, such as first in, first out. OK, so that's what we have thus far. So if I go back on over here, this is what we have. Now, I'm going to add a little bit of formatting over here. I'm going to actually put this into a table so we can start to filter this. And I feel a little bit safer putting it into a table because then the filters are kind of more static. In other words, you could select this whole thing and go to your data tab and add filters up top. But I kind of feel better when it's in a table format. So I'm going to select the whole thing, even though I have a lot of empty cells over here. And then I'm going to go to the insert. And I'm going to make a table out of it. This is going to adjust the formatting a little bit. But I'm going to say, OK, table. And what it does is it flattened out my headings again. So I'm going to select the headings or let's select the whole thing up top. And I'll squish this back down again so it fits on a page. This one maybe can be a little bit longer. And so now we've just got the same thing but in a table structure. OK, so then we'll add some more components to the table later. But right now, I just want to point out that we can sort by the product. So if I go to my product over here and I could sort by, say, product number one and say, OK, and so now I've got the units, each of these units, three of them, in product number one. I can count the number of products that we have on here, even though they're on there and they were purchased for different dollar amounts. So let's say it's the end of the month now and we're trying to figure out our periodic adjustment monthly, which will decrease inventory for the amounts that were sold. And the other side is going to go to cost of goods sold for the cost of the goods are sold. One way we might do that is within Shopify, we might be saying, I believe these numbers are tying out to the physical units of inventory. In other words, we've been increasing them when we purchase. We've been decreasing them or the software has on a perpetual basis when the sales happened. We could tie these into a physical count, for example, to determine the physical number of inventories that we have as of, let's say, the end of the month. These don't tie out to what our numbers will be, but that's the kind of concept. So we can say, okay, I know what the ending units of inventory are. So if I go back on over here, let's imagine that the ending units for product one are zero. We sold all of the units out. All three of these have been sold. We have no units as of 430, we sold them all. So we're going to make our periodic adjustment as of the end of the month. We're always going to do it as of the end of the month or the sale side on a periodic basis. You might do it weekly, but monthly is quite common. Let's say it's at 430. I need to format this in the date format. So I'm going to right click on it, right click, and format this as a date format.  So 430, 430, okay. And then we're going to sell, we sold the total amount of three units, but once again, I'm going to put them on the books one at a time. So I'm just going to say one unit at a time. And I'm going to pick the cost up each line item. So there's the $20 that we are picking up. And basically I noticed it's trying to copy down. You got to be careful with the table when you add formulas because the table will try to basically copy it down. I didn't want it to copy that down. So I'm going to undo that bit. So I undid that. And so now I'm going to copy the same thing just to those couple cells. I'm going to copy this to these cells. So there we have it. So now we've sold all three units. So the unit balance at this point in time, I'm just going to say was one, we sold the one. So it's going to go down to zero. Once again, it's trying to copy down. So I could undo that. So it doesn't copy it down. And then I would like to be the one that copies it down just to those number of units. And then the ending inventory is going to be then the, I usually do it as the cost minus the cost. So it goes back down to zero as well. And then it's copying it down. So I'm going to undo that. And then I want to copy it down to make sure it doesn't mess up if I had any other rows in the table. So we sold all of those basically have been sold out. And then we're going to say on the other two items that we didn't sell any of the other items at this point in time. So now if I look at my total inventory, I can say let's bring this back up and bring in all of my inventory. I'm going to remove the filters or select all of them. So there we have it. And let's pull these ending balances all the way down now. So I'm going to say, let's pull these down. And so there, there they are. So now we've got our ending balance. Here's our ending inventory, summing up to two, eight, one, zero. Okay, we can summarize this in a table. I'm going to go over here and try to make this, I'll make this a skinny column. And then let's put a little table together and for our summary table. And I'm going to put my headers over here. I'll say this is product one, which I might be able to get by just, well, let's just type it in here, I'll say. Product one, product two, and product three. And what do we have thus far? We've got all three products. And then I'm going to say this will be the units balance, and then ending inventory. And let's do this. And let's make this a header.  And I'll make this black and white, and this black and white, or I missed it. I didn't click on it. All right, and then we're going to say the number of units. We're going to use a fancy formula here to do this, but it's not too bad. It's going to be equals to the sum if, and I'm going to use the ifs with an s brackets. And then I'm going to say that I want you to sum the units, these units. I'm just going to select the entire column, or I could select the entire table, let's do the table. I want you to pick up this table. I could see the criteria, there's my range, and then comma, the next argument, and then the criteria range, that meaning sum everything in that area. If this area, I'm going to pick up this table, and notice I'm putting my little pointer there where it has a down arrow, because it's just picking up that table. If that and then comma, and then the next criteria ties into product number one. So in other words, the argument is, I want you to sum up each one here, which is just one unit, if it's on hand still, if it hasn't been sold, if you can tie it out to this side where it says product number one, there's not going to be any ones here because they've all been zeroed out. So if there's zero, let's do the same thing here. Equals, I'm going to say sum if, and I'm going to take the one with the s ifs, and I want you to take this range, sum up this range, comma, criteria range, which is going to be this range, and you have to have that tie out to comma, this criteria product number one. And so if I say enter, it picks up two items, because we have these two that are summing up, it's summing up these two that correspond to those two product, product two. Let's do it one more time. Equals sum ifs, brackets, the sum range is going to be these unit ranges. You want to sum those up, comma, to get to the criteria range, this range, and then comma, if you see in that range a number three. So then it's going to give us four of those because we had four of these with a number three. And then let's do the ending inventory, similar kind of process. We're going to say equals the sum ifs, brackets. I want you to sum the ending inventory range here, comma, if similar process, if this product range, comma, criteria has product one in it. So once again, it's zero because it's summing these up which are gone and there's nothing of product number one left. Do it again here, equals the sum ifs, brackets, sum range, ending inventory, comma, criteria range here, finding the products, comma, and then the criteria is product number two. So there's the two 10, representing product two, product two, adds up to two 10 for those two line items on product two. And then once again, equals the sum ifs, bracket, sum range here, comma, and then the criteria range here, comma, and then if there's product number three, enter. And so that's going to be 2006 which is basically the 650 per unit times four units of product number three.  And we could say sum, just a normal sum this time. This way, sum that way. And then we could also put some brackets around this. So that's where our ending inventory should be. And therefore we can just do an adjustment now. I can go back on over. Now we can also do that table with a pivot table. So we'll get into that more later. But right now I just want to do the journal entry real quick because we're running low on time. We've got 2872 over here. So 2872 is what we currently have in the inventory. And if we subtract this out, that would be our adjustment. We need to decrease it by $62 which kind of makes sense because we sold these three items cost a good sold is the $62, right? So I'm going to go back on over and say, all right, let's go back on over here and just do it with a journal entry, new button. And we're going to do the journal entry monthly instead of just like at the end of the year I'll just do a journal entry and say this is as of the end of 04324. And we're going to say that the cost of good sold is going to be here and that was for $62.62. And then we've got inventory is going down at $62. And boom, we'll just say save it and close it. And so now on a periodic basis at the end of the month we've adjusted our inventory. And so now our inventory is being adjusted that inventory is not supported within QuickBooks with sub ledger reports breaking it down by inventory item but rather is supported by our external schedules over here. So there's the 2810 in terms of dollar amounts of inventory and the 2810 and then on the income statement we have the cost of good sold, which is now in essence hopefully correct on a periodic basis, meaning that number reflects the amount of units that were sold given a first in first out flow assumption periodic inventory method for that for the month of April. And so that's going to be the idea. So then and that hopefully will give us more information so that we're actually matching up the cost of good sold to the sales that we have. And so that's the idea. Now note, you could even get more fancy and try to give it a cost of good sold for product one versus cost of good sold for product two and whatnot to try to break out the cost of good sold but you have that information over here. I mean, you can do that information on your worksheet as well. So that's the general idea. So in future presentations, we'll continue on with this for month number two.


We all know that all the chapters of Bhagavad Gita are called yogas. They are different aspects of yogas. So for example, first chapter is known as Arjun Vishadayog, second chapter is known as Sankh Yog, fifteenth chapter is known as Purushottam Yog. So Bhagavad Gita is also considered a yogic text and in this yogic text in the sixteenth chapter positivity, human potential is elaborated in the most extensive ways. These are called Daivi Sampada and Asuri Sampada. Daivi is divine, Asuri meaning demonic. Sampada meaning possessions or property. These are also qualities but these are something which can be changed as well. So Daivi Sampada and Asuri Sampara, these are the two straight classification given in the sixteenth chapter which is perhaps the most detailed exposition of human potentiality and positivity. These slokas are Abhayam Sattva Sansuddhi, Gyan Yoga Vyasthiti, Dhanam Dhamascha Yagyascha, Swadhyayasthapa Arjavam, Ahinsa Satyamakodhas, Tyaga Shanti Rapaishunam, Dayabhute Shulolutvam, Mardvam Hirchapalam, Tejah, Chhama, Dhriti, Saucham Droho, Nati Manita, Bhavanti Sampadam Daivi Mabhijatascha, Bharata. These are twenty-six Daivi Sampada or divine qualities. These are most pious qualities. These are something to be looked up to. These are something we need to develop in ourselves. These are the also reflection of the human potential and human possibilities. These are also the ways of realizing ultimate human possibility. These are the goals as well as the path to pursue the human excellence according to the yogic tradition. This excellence is ultimately reflected in the liberation, but it is also reflected in the very refined sense of calm and also well-developed system for Artha, material possessions and the sensuous pleasure to enjoy these two for the long duration which is not in contradiction or in disharmony with the world for that also these qualities are required. We are going to have a separate session on the Daivi Sampada because they are not eclectic features or eclectic qualities. These are reflection of the five core qualities which are explained at different places in the yogic tradition. Nirmana Moha, Jita Sangha Dosha, Radhatminitya, Vinivrata Kama, Dandhar Vimukta, Sukhutuk Sanghe, Kachhanta Modha, Padmam Dayam Tath. So these twenty-six potentialities can be clubbed into those five things and those five things are reflection of the yogic world view and the ideals of life. So we are going to have a more detailed conversation on these Daivi Sampada, these qualities. But to understand it briefly, but to have some idea we can explain few of these in this session. So the first quality, the first human potential, the positive human potential is Abhyam, fearlessness. Swami Vivekananda in his lectures explained this at many places. He says that the theme of Vedic literature, the call of Vedic rishis is being abhiya, be fearless. Why fearless and for what fearless? For what fearless? We have to be fearless to follow our dharma. If we look at the first and last word of Bhagavad Gita, these are dharma and mamma. So this text is about discovering our dharma. We already have seen the definition of dharma and dharma that is not related to religion, it is not at all religion. Dharma is identifying that action, those thoughts, those words which cause abhyudai means general development, socio-economic development in the management terms and nishtriya spiritual development. So that which result into both that is dharma. That is expressed according to our aptitude and station of life. So being fearless in following our dharma without being fearless, we cannot follow our dharma. So that is why the first quality identified in the list of the Daivi Sampada is abhyam. Elimination is sattva-sansudhi. Sattva-sansudhi, sattva we will explain it in the later sessions in more detail, sattva is the righteousness, sattva is the illumination, sattva is the harmonious aspect of life. Sattva has to take the help of rajya and tamma to perform its work. Rajya is related to excitement, enjoyment, sensuous enjoyment and moving from one aspect to another aspect of life. Tamma is related to inertia. So activity and inertia has to be balanced. So that faculty through which that balance is attained in life is called sattva. So having sattva that means right balance of activity and inertia, sansudhi, sansudhi is meaning when we have this balance of activity and inertia we attain and that is the point of attaining purity. So consistently remain in purity that is called sattva-sansudhi and we should not forget the context of all these qualities. Context of all these qualities is performing dharma, attaining moksha, also enjoying artha and kam according to our swadharma. So sattva-sansudhi is the second quality. Gyan-yoga vyavasthiti, established in knowledge, so according to the yogic tradition ultimately knowledge is experience and recognition of oneness with the whole existence. So our sense of being separated is result of ignorance and going away of that ignorance is important that is the state of gyan. So attaining that gyan through yoga the process through which that gyan is attained is yoga. So gyan is the outcome, yoga is the process, vyavasthiti meaning maintenance. So attaining that gyan which is about the recognition of realization that whole existence is one or non-dual pursuing the process to attain that knowledge and remaining established in that. We all get glimpse of that oneness many time in many occasions of life. But how to retain that, how to maintain that knowledge, how to maintain that experience, how to behave in a day-to-day manner as if we are connecting to everything else that is gyan-yoga vyavasthiti, dhanam damascha yagyaścha, dhanam meaning charity, dhanam meaning giving away, willingly giving away, willingly sharing, not enjoying whatever you have individually, not enjoying only for the self-aggrandization or self-satisfaction. But enjoying by after giving away, after sharing that is dhanam, dhamma that is control of the senses. In order to practice all these potentialities there is something which comes on our way which are the obstacles that obstacle are about our tendency or tendency of the man to enjoy the sensuous pleasure. Sensuous pleasure is not unacceptable, it is acceptable in the form of karma. But uncontrolled enjoyment can create problem in the world and can create problem for our individual health. So having that sense of self-control that is dhamma, yagya is performance of sacrifice, doing something in a selfless manner, all that which is done for others in the selfless manner is qualified to be yagya. So these are some of the examples we just look at swadhyaya in the yogasutra. So you can see that in the yogasutra and bhagavad-gita there is some overlap in the human potentiality in the form of swadhyaya or in the form of satyam. So these qualities are the positive human potentialities accepted in the yogic tradition. We are going to have more detailed discussion on those in the later sessions.


My name is Dr. Bill Regine, and I'm the chair of Radiation Oncology here at the University of Maryland, and welcome to drawing outside the lines. Today we're going to talk about how we at the University of Maryland Greenbaum Cancer Center have some very unique and advanced cancer fighting tools to deal with recurrent cancer. Recurrent cancer has become more common because of advanced treatments like immunotherapy have allowed people to live longer and be cured, but one of the challenges posed, and this is a tumor cell here, is many of these tumors have been radiated in the past. And keep in mind, when you radiate a tumor in the body, it has some normal tissue organ around it. So it could be the lung, it could be the heart, or lower down in the body, it could be the bowel, or the bladder. If it's been radiated once, these organs have also had some low, some radiation exposure to them, right? So the challenge now is when these tumors grow back, or come back and it's the only area and still a chance for cure, how do you do rear radiation safely? Well, that goes to two advanced modalities that we have. One is proton radiation, which is a very advanced form of radiation that can deliver radiation intensely. And in such a way that when it hits the tumor, because it's a charged particle, there is no additional radiation exposure to these surrounding organs that have already been radiated. And that's key because that means you can get more radiation safely without hurting the organs that have already been radiated. The second thing we now have available to help the radiation be even more effective when it gets into the cancer cell is something called hypothermia. And hypothermia is the ability to heat around the tumor in such a way that's equivalent to a low-grade fever, 102, 103 degrees. And what that does is dilates blood vessels. And by dilating blood vessels, you deliver more oxygen to the cancer. And that's important because oxygen combined with radiation makes the radiation more effective in killing these tumor cells. So that is the way we take two advanced modalities which you can find nowhere else in the state of Maryland to help cure our patients with recurrent cancer.