Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission and welcome to our annual public hearing on the Commission's agenda and priorities for fiscal year 2022. This hearing is held pursuant to section 4J of the Consumer Product Safety Act, which requires a commission before it establishes an agenda and priorities for an upcoming fiscal year to conduct a public hearing on the agenda and the priorities and provide a reasonable opportunity for the public to submit comments on our priorities and agenda. And I suspect that even if we didn't have that statutory mandate, we'd still want to do this. When we convened for this meeting last year, I noted it was being held under unusual circumstances due to the coronavirus pandemic. But here we are again under similar circumstances and it doesn't seem so unusual this year. Anyway, over the past year we've conducted several and hosted several virtual meetings and I think that's enabled us to carry on agency business as close to normal as possible. So while I miss being together in the same room, it's wonderful that we have so many stakeholders who can participate in this annual hearing without having to get on a plane, jump in a car or even make a trip to the office. So thanks to everybody for being here today. Before we begin the forum presentations, I'd like to take a moment to recognize a special group of advocates who will testify today. I refer to those who've suffered the terrible loss of a loved one and who have taken those losses and turned their tragedies into advocacy. I think you deserve a special thanks for doing so. What's particularly compelling is how so many of you have become effective advocates because you've not only demonstrated great courage in sharing your stories, but you've done your homework, you've organized yourselves and you've presented moving, thoughtful and persuasive cases for action. And by the way, that's what gets results. So a special shout out for this group today. And of course we're grateful for all the advocates who present testimony today as well as those who have submitted written comments. I assure you I read all the written comments and recommendations submitted to us. And I'm sure my fellow commissioners do as well. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge my fellow commissioners who'll be participating in today's hearing. In order of seniority, we have Commissioner Elliott Kay and good morning to you, Elliott, Commissioner Dana Biacco and good morning, Dana and Commissioner Peter Feldman and good morning, Peter. Each commissioner will have the opportunity to ask questions at the conclusion of each panel. In addition, I want to acknowledge our Executive Director, Mary Boyle, our Acting General Counsel, Jen Sultan and the Commission Secretary, Alberta Mills. They will be online during the proceedings. And by the way, and FYI, I've asked our very busy senior staff today's proceedings as possible so that they can get direct input from our stakeholders. We have three panels today with five or six presenters on each panel. Each presenter will have five minutes to deliver their comments and each commissioner will have five minutes for questions of each panel. Presenters microphones will be muted and cameras turned off when their panel is not making a presentation. We've provided those who wish to use PowerPoint slides the opportunity to do so. So if you're using slides, please indicate when you wish to move to the next slide by stating next slide, please. Because we will not have green, yellow or red lights to guide the presenter's times, Secretary Mills will give a one minute warning orally. And we're sorry for that intrusion, but we don't have any other way of doing it. Following each panel, each commissioner will have five minutes for questions of the panel. Given time considerations, we're going to be able to have just one round of commission questions for each panel. We're going to hear from two panels this morning, and then we're going to take a one hour lunch break and move to the third panel. Because we have shortened the time for presentations and for commissioned questions, we'll keep the record open for two weeks following today's hearing. So speakers will be welcome to supplement their testimony, and commissioners will be free to submit follow up questions to the panelists. So with that, I would like to call the first panel. And that consists of Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, who is representing the American Academy of Pediatrics, Ms. Nancy Coles representing Kids in Danger, Ms. Rachel Weintraub representing the Consumer Federation of America, Mr. Brett Horn, who is representing Charlie's House and Ms. Crystal Ellis, a member of the Parents Against Tipover. And with that, Dr. Hoffman, feel free to begin and we welcome you. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Good morning. I can chair Adler, commissioners Bianco Feldman and Kay. My name is Dr. Ben Hoffman. And I'm here today on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, as Acting Commissioner Adler mentioned. I currently serve as the chair of the AAP Council on Injury Violence and Poison Prevention. And it's a pleasure to be back with you. Today, I want to underscore for the commission that this is a time of urgency on behalf of America's children. Kids have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, as you know, has disrupted routine and exposed kids to greater risks for injury related to consumer products. Oh, I'm being asked to show on my webcam. I apologize. There you go. Yes, I apologize for the darkness. It's 7am on the West Coast. The sun is not and it's a cloudy day. The sun is not quite up. I have heard a gazillion harrowing stories from colleagues, pediatricians around the country who have seen alarming uptick in severe injuries to kids over the last year. We now have data from the NICE system that shows concerning increases in ER treated injuries from button batteries, ATVs, cleaning agents, and a bunch of other consumer products. The work of the CPSC is all the more important in this difficult time for kids. And the AAP appreciates the opportunity to make recommendations for the agency's priorities for the next fiscal year. I want to start out discussing safe sleep. We deeply appreciate the CPSC's work over the past couple of years after the over the past year in proposing two crucial safety standards that will create safer sleep environments for children throughout the country. Finalizing these standards expeditiously should continue to be a top priority. The safest sleep environments for infants or cribs, bassinets, portable cribs or play yards that conform to CPSC mandatory safety standards. Infants should always sleep in their own space on their back on a firm flat surface without any crib bumpers, bedding or other products. The AAP strongly supports the CPSC proposed rule and infant sleep products and we urge you to finalize it quickly and with the soonest possible effective date. The AAP also appreciates the agency's progress on crib bumpers. Crib bumper products have no place in a safe sleep environment and pose a significant suffocation hazard. The continued presence of these dangerous and unnecessary items in the marketplace puts infants at unnecessary risk and jeopardizes the clarity of the AAP and the CPSC's public health messaging around safe sleep. The commission should remain committed to reducing safe sleep deaths with the goal of ensuring infants are in safe sleep environments every time they go to bed. Liquid nicotine is a highly toxic product that poses a serious risk of negative health effects and death for children with children spending more time at home sometimes with limited or distracted supervision from working parents or caregivers. The AAP remains concerned about potential exposures. It's all the more important for the CPSC to fully endorse the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act of 2015 to prevent liquid nicotine poisoning and to place a significant emphasis on taking public action to enforce this law. Regarding tip overs, excuse me, the Academy supports a strong mandatory standard to prevent furniture tip overs. The best solution for this preventable and tragic problem is simply to require safe dressers that will not turn tip over. I personally have cared for a number of families whose landlords prohibit the installation of anti furniture anchors. And I know that educational efforts can only go so far. We look forward to additional progress from the CPSC towards a robust mandatory safety standard to prevent this hazard. High powered magnet sets. We remain strongly committed in support of a ban on high powered magnet sets to the grave injuries that are caused when they're ingested. In a span of three months in 2019 as magnets hit the market again, surgeons in my own institution removed 31 of these products from the stomachs of young children. To prevent this, the known harms associated with these products, we urge the commission to establish a strong mandatory safety standard for small rare earth magnet sets. A mandatory standard to protect children and is necessary given the serious inadequacy of the other of the current efforts within the ASTM International to set this standard. Finally, we would welcome opportunities to work with the CPSC to address hazards from window falls, drownings, button batteries, long term exposure hazards, liquid laundry packets and other child injury hazards we're seeing during the pandemic. Thank you so much for this opportunity to testify before you today and I look forward to answering your questions. So thank you so much for your testimony and we're sorry about the tight time constraints, but you could understand we have a very busy schedule. Ms. Nancy Calls from Kids in Danger. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us here, giving us this opportunity to share our thoughts on CPSC's agenda and priorities for the coming year. As you know, kid is dedicated to protecting children by improving and fighting for product safety. Right now, the overwhelming issue, as Dr. Hoffman mentioned for CPSC, is responding to COVID-19 and assuring that Americans are safe from dangerous products, both those unique to the pandemic and those everyday items that may pose new dangers or be overlooked during such a stressful time. We urge the CPSC to continue to find ways to assess and evaluate injury patterns, such as the recent report using the preliminary nice estimates. And with the one-time appropriation of 50 million dollars, the CPSC can develop an effective response for addressing the impact of COVID, both on your operations as well as on safety. The CPSC must continue to prioritize the safety of products before they enter the marketplace and our homes. This includes standards development, data and analysis to spot emerging hazards, and a robust engagement with consumers and industry. Since 2010, through the implementation of Danny's Law or Section 104, the CPSC has successfully developed strong mandatory standards for 24 types of durable infant and toddler products. We applaud the CPSC for the commitment to this process and urge you to continue to prioritize this work. This includes the standards currently in development, as well as adding new products as they enter the market. The proposed rule on infant sleep products will expand protections for infants by covering all products intended for infant sleep, not subject to an existing rule. We would also ask the CPSC to prioritize the crib bumper liner standard to get the dangerous padded crib bumpers off store shelves as soon as possible. You will hear today from parents who have lost children to furniture tip overs and now tragically have new parents joining their rags. We urge CPSC to prioritize their work on a strong standard to be enacted as soon as possible. Serious internal injuries, poisoning and death can be the result of ingesting button cell batteries, laundry packets and small powerful magnets. The CPSC should consider mandatory standards and encourage manufacturers to use technologies that eliminate these ingestion risks. The CPSC has been a leader at drowning prevention through pools safely. I recently become aware of another drowning hazard that I would like to raise. That is the proliferation of learn to swim devices. Nicole uses some Levi drowned in June 2018. After his death, Nicole noticed that children like Levi, who had drowned in pools outside of times when they were expected to be near water, had almost always been wearing a device such as a puddle jumper in the hours or days before. Parents may use it for extra security while at the pool, but it has two properties that may cause it to lead to drowning. First, it holds the child upright in the water, which is known as the drowning position because the child without that vest would sink and gives parents a false sense of security. For toddlers who have no concept of flotation, it removes a healthy fear of water that might keep them from jumping in when unattended. The product is certified as a flotation device by the Coast Guard, but it's being labeled and sold as a learned to swim device, which it is not. We know that safety devices sometimes have unintended unintended consequences, and I believe that to be the case here. I urge CPSC to look into these products. Jonathan Midford has spoken with those addressing these issues and can be an asset to CPSC's understanding and action on the issue. Like COVID-19, new challenges to product safety can arise seemingly out of nowhere, but the CPSC needs to be ready and nimble to respond. The regulatory robot, which is a great tool for small companies, should continue to be prioritized with updates and improvements. And while meeting the CPSC's regulations, additional focus on hazard analysis, human factors and end-user focus design should be provided to avoid new hazards or well-known hazards from appearing in new products. Last month, KID released our report on 2020 recalls. We found that children's product recalls have seen a downward trend over the past 11 years. The last three years have the lowest number of recalls since at least 2001. We found a rise in recalls of unstable dressers and products containing or coated with lead. We once again had difficulty getting any measure of recalled effectiveness from CPSC. Innovation is needed in this area. The CPSC should work with stakeholders to keep moving the needle toward effective recalls. I know the CPSC has been aggressive in planning to bolster the agency's budget to better meet its mission. We believe that for too long, this agency has been forced to compromise on the safety of consumers, especially children based on funding. Thank you. Fully funded CPSC. I'll end on that. That's fine. I think we will permit you to finish sentences, but we do appreciate your consideration of time. And I do want to mention that you referred to Jonathan Midget. He is the consumer ombudsman at CPSC and always available to consult with consumers. Next, Ms. Rachel Weintraub. Good morning, Rachel. Good morning. Acting Chair Adler, commissioners, Bayoko, Feldman and Kay, I appreciate testifying before you today. I hope you and your families are doing as well as they can during this difficult time. I'm Rachel Weintraub, legislative director and general counsel at Consumer Federation of America. CFA is a nonprofit association of approximately 280 pro consumer groups that was founded in 1968 to advance the consumer interests through advocacy and education. The CPSC's mission impacts every American every day to protect the public from injury and death associated with the use of consumer products, especially now when Americans, just as we are doing right now, have fundamentally shifted how we spend our time to being home. The work of the CPSC is as critical as ever. And we applaud the study that the CPSC released on injuries during the pandemic, which documented increases in certain categories. The CPSC's mission relies upon agency action, using all of its tools to issue mandatory standards, assess civil and criminal penalties, develop voluntary standards, conduct effective and timely recalls and educate consumers. We applaud the 50 million in additional funds as a first step. And we're working to ensure a significant budget increase, a budget of 350 million for the agency to do its work. Please accept my written testimony into the record and I will briefly summarize that submission. After over a decade of inaction by the CPSC on the hazards posed to babies by crib bumpers and other infant sleep products, we applaud the agency for issuing final rules for crib bumpers, crib mattresses and infant infant sleep products and FY 2021. On window coverings, the CPSC should monitor the marketplace and ensure that loopholes don't exist in the voluntary standard. The CPSC should prioritize prioritize reducing deaths and injuries from courted window coverings, monitor and ensure compliance in the marketplace and develop an effective voluntary standard that limits the strangulation risk posed by custom products. On flame retardants, we appreciate that the CPSC has voted to move forward on our petition, urging the CPSC to adopt mandatory standards to protect consumers from the health hazards caused by the use of some organo halogen flame retardants. We urge the commission to take significant steps to reduce the hazards posed by these chemicals. On electric scooters, we applaud the work that CPSC has done this past year, documenting the increase in injuries from 7,700 in 2017 to 27,700 in 2019. We appreciate the form held in September, and we appreciate the CPSC's very positive work in the voluntary standards process. We urge the agency continue to document death and injuries, lead efforts to enforce reporting, recall and safe products, support policies that reduce the severity and incidents of injury and death and educate consumers about safe operation. On high powered magnet sets, in January 2020 in an update, it was documented that six times more magnet ingestants occurred in 2019 than were reported to US Boys and Control Centers in 2016. Current voluntary standard efforts are inadequate. They focus exclusively on warnings and changes to packaging, and much more is needed to be done. And we urge the agency to take immediate action to promulgate a strong mandatory standard. On laundry packets, we've seen increases since 2018 in ingestions. We urge the CPSC to determine why the voluntary standard is not reducing these exposures and issue an effective mandatory standard. On ROVs and ATVs, we are concerned about the increasing number of ROV related data and recalls. We appreciate that the CPSC now includes ROVs in their annual reports of death and injuries involving highway vehicles. And we appreciate that the 2021 operating plan includes an ANPR for OHV's fire and debris penetration. But in 2022, we urge the commission to prioritize the issue more fully, including ATV safety and finalizing the rule making that the CPSC was directed to do. On civil and criminal penalties, it's an incredibly important tool that we urge the agency to use more robustly. On racial and economic disparities in child product safety, CFA did a report in 2013 that documents that much more is needed to document problems and potential solutions focusing on unintentional injuries and death and socioeconomic status and race. On saferproducts.gov, we urge the commission to take additional action to improve the database. On furniture tip-overs, we urge you to heed the call that you will be hearing today by parents who've suffered unbelievable losses. And we also urge Congress to pass the sturdy act. We look forward to working with you to accomplish these and so many other priorities to protect Americans every single day. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for your testimony. I'm sorry that at times it feels like these are exercises in speed reading, but we do appreciate your comments and we have read through them. So thanks again. Mr. Brett Horne. Good morning, sir. I believe you're muted. All right. Can you hear me now? Yes. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you. Acting Chairman Adler, Commissioner Kaye, Commissioner Villaco, and Commissioner Feldman for allowing me to present today to reintroduce myself to you. My name is Brett Horne and I'm joining you today from the nation's first safety demonstration home, Charlie's House in Kansas City, Missouri. I'm the founder of Charlie's House. I'm also a member of the ASTM F15.90 Executive Subcommittee on Consumer Products. And I'm testifying to you today as a tip over dad. I'm going to skip through the next paragraph, which thanks you and compliments the CPSC for all the work you do. But please know that we do appreciate it. As consumers, we certainly we assume that most products we purchase today are inherently safe, that they are made with a certain level of care in mind. Unfortunately, this is not always true. Next month, my son, Charlie, should be turning 16. He should be learning to drive. He should be playing sports, going to school virtually or otherwise. He should be dating, learning, making mistakes and aggravating his mother and father with his teenager attitude. But unfortunately, Charlie can't do these things. His future in my world were Rob. When he was only two and a half years old, Charlie had to open from an app. We didn't hear him on the audio baby monitor. But without obvious sound, Charlie was interacting with his dresser, a very short 30 inch dresser. Perhaps he was opening drawers or attempting to reach a decorative statue we had on top. We simply don't know. What we do know is the man he found him trapped beneath the dresser after a tiptoe run. His triplet sibling brother was still asleep in the bed next to his lifeless body. Charlie died that day. His bright smile gone forever from our lives. He died because he was a normal kid who was inquisitive about his surroundings. He died perhaps because he was mimicking our daily actions of opening a dresser drawer. He died because I didn't know the importance of anchoring at the time. Ultimately, I believe Charlie died because the furniture manufacturing industry had failed to produce a tip over standard which addressed real world use of dressers. And 14 years later, we're still there. The tip over problem is obviously not new to CPSC. To quote your own 2021 tip over report between 2000 and 2019, tip over incidents have been linked to 469 child fatalities and TV and furniture tip over incidents injure 11,300 people each year. These statistics get thrown out without much attention sometimes, but they are truly shocking. That's an estimate of over 226,000 tip over injuries in 20 years. How have we not fix this problem yet? I want to thank the current commission for making tip over as a priority. You've made it a priority for several years, and I'm aware of your intent to issue a rule in 2021. It's imperative that this proposed rule accomplish the tasks which industry and the voluntary standards committee has not. Any rule which does not consider the real world usage and child's normal interaction with their dressers will be insufficient. A new rule must address the four primary reasons furniture is killing kids. One dressers are designed to hold clothes in them. We don't test that way. Two, most clothing dressers allow for multiple drawers and doors to be open at the same time. Yet the current voluntary standard does not apply the weighted test in this fashion. Three, dressers are often placed on carpeted surfaces. Manufacturers know this. They know that the carpeting negatively affects the stability of the unit, yet we don't test dressers on carpeted surfaces. And number four, dynamic force, which is the force that a child can apply upon a dresser beyond their normal body weight by climbing and normally interacting with their dressers. If a new rule doesn't account for these issues, we are not fully addressing the problem. And we will be sitting here a decade from now still trying to fix it. As this hearing is to discuss FY 2022, the CPSC keep tip overs as a priority. If we have learned anything from the bunk bed standard, manufacturers will likely pursue every opportunity to delay a final rule. The CPSC has invested far too much time and money on tip overs to settle for an insufficient rule which doesn't prevent tip overs. We must finish the job. This action is urgently needed. As Nancy mentioned earlier, we've seen three additional deaths in the last two months from dangerous dressers. These are the ones we are aware of. The problem is real. Kids continue to die. Testing must continue. Unfortunately, my Charlie is gone. Killed from a dangerous dresser. I urge you to keep furniture tip overs as a priority until the problem is solved. Don't do it for my Charlie. Do it for the Charlie in your life. Do it for your loved ones. Please finish the job. Thank you. Thank you so much for that testimony. Greatly appreciated. Ms. Crystal Ellis, who is a member of parents against tip overs, you may proceed. Welcome. I wanted to make sure I was unmuted. Thank you. I wanted to first say thank you to the commissioners for allowing me to speak today. I also appreciate this virtual opportunity as coming from the West Coast. It's quite it's quite a journey. Casey, age two. Natalie, age three. Hope, age two. These are the names of the three latest tip over fatalities that we know about. I say that we know about because as you know, it can take years if ever for these cases to be brought to light. You know that these deaths are the tip of the iceberg and there are thousands of injuries since the last priority. I'm asking again for tip overs, stressor tip overs to be the number one priority for the agency as the problem has not yet been addressed adequately. Seven years. It is almost seven years since my beautiful, kind, smart two year old boy Camden was killed by an unstable dresser that should have never made it to the marketplace. This pain is still fresh though. This wound is ripped open every time I hear another family lost their child to a tip over. How many more children have to die or suffer injuries before we say enough is enough when we take action? Our organization, Parents Against Tip Overs, warned this agency before that children will continue to die until we get serious and use all of the tools available to us to stop this crisis. As consumers, we're doing our part to help draft and push legislation through the House and the Senate with the Sturdy Act. It's been reintroduced by both chambers and I hope it makes progress this year. However, as we've seen, politics can be challenging and messy and derailed by leaders with agendas tainted by powerful lobby money not to mention the deadly pandemic. I know there is tip over testing happening at CPSC as the ANPR went to an NPR. This process has no timeline and no end in sight. We've been trying to get a tough mandatory standard for two decades. We must do better. We, the consumers, deserve better. We deserve more mandatory standards and safe products in our marketplace. We deserve to be able to go and pick out a nursery set for the baby. We are joyfully preparing for and already love beyond measure without the fear that these products will take their lives. Now is the time for quick moving action. Now is the time for CSUs to be added to section 104 rulemaking as both Commissioner Adler and Commissioner Kay pointed out just because we cannot save all with this solution does not mean we should not save some. To quote Commissioner Kay directly, we should be pursuing every authority available that we have. We should send a signal to industry that we're not leaving any tool unused. And as industry pointed out, this rulemaking would send a ripple out to all CSU design as there is a lot of overlap between children's stress reliance and the others. This is exactly what needs to happen to cut through this deadly bureaucratic tape that leaves unsuspecting families holding the bag when their children are killed or named. Since the failed vote brought by Kay and Adler on the proposal to include CSUs marketed for children's rooms in the section 104 rulemaking, two years have passed and many more families have been devastated by this tragedy. This vote would have made a difference to them. I'm happy to see that dressers are continuing to be recalled even as the pandemic has slowed many parts of the agency for safety reasons. I continue to personally advocate for a larger budget for the agency to be able to adequately protect consumers. I also continue to seek out about the absolute danger in the power of 6B to allow industry to gag this agency. As Chairman Adler pointed out in his latest keynote for the IXO conference in February 2021, somehow every other agency in the federal government manages to function fairly and fully without the restrictions in 6B, and it's the public that suffers from the limits on sharing safety information. The public. That is my son Camden and every other family that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged. One minute remaining. Commissioner Kay said it best when he said people die because of 6B. It's as simple as that. 6B was a culpable party in Camden's death. 6B slowed the agency and held the CPSC hostage to the manufacturer's wishes until it was too late for my family to save our son. We all deserve to know the products that are a hidden risk for death and injury in our homes. Consumers deserve to be safe and protected. That is your mission. It's time to move to action. Thank you again for this opportunity and I look forward to working with you again this year. And thank you for your testimony and I just want to assure everybody we greatly appreciate the testimony that you've given today. I think everybody will take it to heart. I have some questions to ask but I'm not going to be able to ask everybody and I'm certainly not going to be able to ask every question that I have but I can't tell you again how much we appreciate it. And so I would like to direct a question to Dr. Hoffman if I might. Dr. Hoffman, we're going to hear a testimony from a consumer whose child was lost to ingestion of a button cell battery and I noticed that AAP is searching us to continue to work to strengthen standards so that we could securely enclose all button cell batteries. And you made a comment that I found intriguing so I was wondering if you could elaborate on that and you said that the ultimate goal is to have a standard that would protect kids even if a button cell battery were ingested and that seems to me to be the platinum standard for protecting kids. Do you have any ability, I mean, can you elaborate on how likely you think it is that this could be developed in any other safety steps that are being taken with respect to button cell batteries which by the way have been a hidden hazard for decades. So thank you. Thank you very much for that question. I think Chair Adler, I think the platinum standard references is exactly right. The button batteries and especially the lithium coin batteries because of their size represent a specific danger to children. It would be, I think it would require significant technological advances to be able to produce batteries that did not discharge immediately upon ingestion which is the problem that we see with those batteries. In the last year, one of the manufacturers has innovated an approach adding a bittering agent to the surface of the battery with the lithium coin batteries anyway with the hope that that will dissuade children that put it in their mouth from swallowing it. There's not a lot of evidence behind it and that agent has been used in the past in liquids and not been terribly effective but we're excited about the movement forward and the fact that there is some innovation and hopeful that that will spur further innovation. I think as the packaging is going to be key and education is gonna be key but until we can find a way to produce batteries that don't represent a fundamental hazard because of the way that they discharge electricity I think that we're gonna continue to see this issue. Thank you so much for that answer and I will say that I'm not sure that biterance worked that well in protecting kids against the high powered magnets but I think every measure that can be approached makes some sense. Ms. Coles, I'd like to ask you a question because you did reference the report that the commission issued on the effect of the novel coronavirus pandemic on preliminary nice estimates and that was a well qualified report but you've read the report and I was wondering having read the report and having seen some of the changes in the patterns of injuries has that led you to change any recommendations about priorities with respect to children's hazards? Thanks for that question. I think there's a lot of data in there. It was obviously preliminary data so that we're hoping to see more on that. I think one thing is the issue you just mentioned that of button cell batteries that we saw 93% increase in battery injuries with children five to nine which are not the usual target for these. So you can assume that it's perhaps because they were home more unattended more than usual. So I think that's one thing that comes up. And then I think we have to just think about where we saw decreases like with sports and things when those start up again we'll hear off the perception of safety and do we need to do some preliminary work to make sure we can re-enter those sports safely? Thank you for that. And I must give a nod to our nice reports which help us track what's been happening as a result of the pandemic. And Ms. Weintraub, if I might ask you the question or at least I may preface it with a comment. You mentioned that our implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act resulted in the promulgation of more safety rules than we ever did in our history and did in a relatively short period of time. And I thank you for that. And I think that we have done a good job there but I note that that rulemaking was done under I'm getting feedback, Steve. That rulemaking was done under the section 104 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act which has a streamlined procedure that takes us back to what is more traditional APA rulemaking. But in addition, we still have section seven and nine which apply to traditional rulemaking not addressing children's products. And so you've had experience both with the 104 streamlined rulemaking and the section seven and nine rulemaking. And one of the arguments in favor of the more cumbersome procedures is that we get higher quality standards from the more elaborate procedures. And since you've had experience with both I wonder if you could give us some feedback about whether you've seen a degradation or diminution in the quality of standards under section 104. Thank you for that question. I would say I have absolutely not seen that. I think some of the standards that have been promulgated under section 104 such as the CRIP standard for example or some of the strongest in the world that represent real world use, the racking test for example on the CRIP standard is exceptional, something that we've been trying to get included for years. Similarly, I don't think that you can see any sort of quality different distinction between 104 standards and section seven and nine. From experience, we know seven and nine requires such extensive cost benefit analysis and other obstacles that so few rules have been promulgated under those provisions that really are more restrictive than other agencies, many other agencies have to go through in order to finalize rules. So I really don't see any sort of distinction at all other than more standards and more children ultimately protected. Thank you so much for that answer. I suspect my time's about to run out but I did wanna ask Mr. Horne and Ms. Ellis, what are the points made? Oh, I haven't used up my time. Okay, thank you so much for your testimony. I now turn to Commissioner Kay for any questions he has. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm actually gonna yield back to you if you wanna ask Mr. Horne or Ms. Ellis your question. I was gonna start with them as well. So I'll just follow up after you if you'd like. Okay, I'll make it very brief because one of the things that you mentioned is that we need to have a safety standard that reflects real life use of furniture and one of the most critical things. And I think you listed all four of those concerns very, very succinctly, but is the dynamic force of kids playing on dressers? And I was wondering if either of you had any additional comments to make about kids in the real world using dressers? Well, just to build on the dynamic force issue, in your report, you listed 469 deaths in 20 years. Now we know of at least three more. I can virtually guarantee you in all 472 of those deaths, some level of dynamic force was applied. The kid wasn't simply walking by the dresser and it fell over on top of them. They were interacting with the dresser in some way, shape, or form. And that's why I truly feel that we have to address, that is one key issue that we have to address. Crystal? And just to follow up on that, I mean, Brett and I both have children that died with very, very short dressers. And the way that my son was found, we didn't witness it, but the way he was found suggested that he was opening the drawer and leaning in to pull the clothes out of the way kids just pull everything out of their dresser. And so he was doing exactly what the dresser was intended to be used for, which was removing clothes, so. Thank you so much, Mr. Kay. Thank you for that and back to you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And so, Miss Ellis and Mr. Horan, just following up with that, with the chairman's question, we obviously have to get this right. We have to get the standard right in terms of making sure that it addresses the hazards under real-world conditions. You both listed the conditions that we currently all believe are necessary to address. One of the concerns that I've had is that over time in the last five to seven years, there's been, as we have seen new incidents, we keep adding new conditions, which is good that we're adjusting. But my concern is that as new incidents continue to occur, new conditions will pop up that may not be contemplated by the proposed standard. Is there anything that you're seeing from the most recent data that would lead you to believe, either of you believe, that there are additional real-world conditions that we should be considering that we may not be right now? I spend the majority of my time focused on those four conditions I listed earlier. I would say the one thing I didn't mention is currently we test to a 50-pound standard. And that is supposed to be reflective of a child up to the age, up to and including the age of five. There's some confusion on whether that includes five-year-olds or doesn't. But if it does, it certainly doesn't come close to replicating a five-year-old's weight. So there's a sufficient deficit there that isn't being addressed by the current standard on the weight issue, which we currently test for. And that shot in the cell. Children's weight continues to change over time. That's what made me think of that answer. So sorry, Chris. And that said, I think it still loops back to dynamic force and the idea that we're testing for children's strengths as they are interacting with the dresser. So I don't think those are mutually exclusive. I think that we should account for the weight of children covered by the standard, but then also note that their dynamic force may be a different point of reference. So I think we are, as we looked over the data over the last 20 years, I think that as we've looked over circumstances and consulted with other child advocates and the AAP, I think we're bringing those circumstances together under those four that we've addressed. Okay, thank you both for that. I'm gonna turn now to Ms. Wintrob. Talk about window coverings. I wanted to get a sense from you since you were involved in the most recent voluntary standards effort, which attempted, unfortunately and arbitrarily, to delineate between so-called stock and custom products. Are you able to distinguish readily what the difference is between a stock and a custom product under that standard? We raise concerns about exactly that problem as the voluntary standard was being worked on. And I think that lack of distinction is actually exacerbated by online sales. That if stock is defined as what's in a box and that's preset, but you're purchasing something online, what are those distinctions when you're buying something online or making a very large purchase for many rooms? So I think it's very difficult to make those distinctions. It's not clear to me that consumers know or have any comprehension of what those distinctions are at all when they're, we're buying products online, which so many people are. So that is a huge problem. Time. Great, thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. Thank you so much. Commissioner Biacco, your questions please. Thank you, Chairman Adler. And thank you everyone for submitting your testimony. It was very thorough and we appreciate that. I have one question for Dr. Hoffman. Do you know or do we have any data in the button battery scenario where the batteries were when they were removed from, removed by the child before it was swallowed? I mean, was this a situation where a child got into a product and took the battery out or was the battery already out like changing the battery situation? I would be really interested to know what the set of circumstances are. I think that would be very helpful in coming up with a standard or rule. Any idea? Thank you for that question, Commissioner Biacco. I believe that data is, there is anecdotal data available and I can get that through our button back to American County Pediatrics Button Battery Task Force. My understanding is that very few of the ingestions are associated with removal of batteries from the sealed packaging. But these batteries are so pervasive and they are in products that can easily be opened, many times especially in remote controls. I know a number of the ingestions and a few of the ingestions that I have been associated with or that I know of have been from batteries that were removed and fell into couch cushions or rolled underneath furniture and may not have been fully charged but still had enough electricity in them to be able to cause damage. The fact of the matter is that kids are by nature, especially smaller kids, curious, mobile, they're all over the place. And it is in their nature to put things in their mouth because that's part of how they explore the world. As Ms. Cowles mentioned, the 93% increase in battery injuries from five to nine year olds is especially concerning because that's an issue of exposure, kids being at home and exposed to the, just in places where those batteries are. I think that as Chair Adler mentioned, we need to work with industry to be able to develop innovative approaches that will prevent these batteries from discharging and until we do that, they're gonna remain a consistent hazard. Well, you know, I can't get out of my mind so I haven't had the opportunity to really do a deep dive into the research. I mean, I'm not gonna tell you how I feel about magnets but batteries, they've been around obviously for a long time and they have a use and we've been using them. So it's interesting to me that we've seen and I agree with Ms. Cowles that we've been home and so you're gonna see an increase in exposure from that sort of thing. But I'm just wondering, you know, is there something, a change in circumstance of some nature that we could see a trend to try to narrow the center? I'm always looking for the, you know, the greatest problem in the center to fix the outside but you gotta get to the center, right?  I mean, I am having trouble in my own mind trying to figure out, you're right, children put things in their mouths all the time. Why batteries now? I think it's the proliferation of these items and the fact that 10 years ago, you know, they were in a number of products and that number has exploded. They are absolutely pervasive at this point in time, you know, from your vehicle key fob to every remote control you have, to the scale in your bathroom, to the thermometer. And that also includes even though the size is relatively small, hearing aid batteries. And I know that my father has hearing aids and it is not unusual for us to find batteries that he has, you know, accidentally dropped in his home that, you know, end up in places where kids are gonna find them if they were there. Very interesting. Okay, if you have any data that you'd like to send along to me, I'd be happy to look it over. I'm interested in this particular issue. So thank you. We'll work on that. My pleasure. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you so much, commissioner Biakko, commissioner Feldman, your questions please. Thank you. Dr. Hoffman, you're still in the hot seat. Question for you. CPSC, you mentioned liquid nicotine enforcement in your remarks. CPSC's experience with enforcing the Child Nicotine Poison Prevention Act, I think we can all agree has been checkered. When I first arrived at the agency, that the commission was not fully enforcing the restricted flow requirement. And credit were credits due to AAP and your advocacy. We worked together to seek some changes and to push as an agency priority, enforcement, full enforcement of the act and conducting consumer level recalls if necessary. Fast forward to the past year, again, I have some concerns. Obviously under COVID-19, the agency's field inspections have fallen off and the agency still has yet to conduct a consumer level recall. I'm curious for your honest assessment of how we're doing and what else we could be doing in this respect. Thank you for that question, commissioner Feldman. I think that the issue of flow restrictors is absolutely essential. I know within my own state, I can still go down to a gas station and find liquid nicotine containers that do not have flow restrictors. That's been my experience as well. Yeah, and I think that the pandemic has made things complicated for everybody. The industry has fought back hard on any sort of regulation or on all regulation and that has made it really complicated. I think that enforcing a standard or on flow restrictors would be incredibly helpful as a first step, but I think there's a lot more that we need to do. I think flavoring in liquid nicotine is a huge issue because that is specifically targeted towards kids. And I know that that may not be the purview of the CPSC. Yeah, I wanna say focus on the issues that are specific to CPSC and I hear your concern. Yeah, so I think, so getting out doing the surveys, getting these dangerous products off the market without flow restrictors would be phenomenal. I think that's gonna be really essential. I do not have data in front of me on the number of ingestions. We do know that calls to the poison center have skyrocketed, poison centers across the country have skyrocketed during the pandemic. So I can't imagine that it's not gonna be, that the data is not gonna be really concerning. Thank you for that. My next question, I wanna be respectful of time is to you. You mentioned in your statement a little bit about Charlie's house. I'm curious if you could explain what's going on behind you and what your focus on? Well, thank you for asking little commercial here. Charlie's house has been a dream of ours since Charlie passed away 14 years ago. But we recently completed the nation's first full scale safety demonstration home, 3400 square foot facility where we walk room to room to room. We have video monitors in every room and show different home safety tips. It's an education center. Our mission is to prevent injuries and accidents to children in and around the home. So we're really excited about it. Unfortunately, we were scheduled to open last March. So we are open but with COVID restrictions, of course. So thank you. I understand that. And just to be shameless, I think I'll ask, my staff and I are in the office and ready to get back fully to work. When we resume travel, I certainly love to come visit if you'll have me. Oh, welcome. Thank you. No further questions then, Commissioner Feldman. Thank you so much. I wanna thank the first panel you guys had to lead the way in this virtual hearing. I think you all did a marvelous job. And again, sorry about the time restrictions, but we are trying to stay on schedule. So thanks again and we will now convene the second panel. And I will call the names of the second panelists and wave to all of you goodbye and thanks again for your presentations. So for our second panel, we're going to have Ms. Ori Shin from Consumer Reports, Ms. Tristus Hamsmith, Reese's Purpose, Mr. Remington Gregg from Public Citizen, Ms. Keisha Bowles from Another Day, Another Chance, and Ms. Kristen Kearns from the American Parallel and Footwear Association. So I look forward to having you all seated virtually. And Steve, if you can put Ms. Shin up, Ori, we'd love to hear your testimony. Thank you. On behalf of Consumer Reports, I can hear you but I can't see you. Can you turn your camera on, please? Oh, my camera. Oh, excuse me, sorry. Oh, sorry again. Thank you. On behalf of Consumer Reports, the Independent Nonprofit Nonpartisan Organization, I welcome the opportunity to testify about the CPSC's priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. The CPSC's work has remained critical to keep public safe from hazardous consumer products during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the challenges specific to the pandemic, we commend the CPSC for moving forward on many fronts over the last year, including on its product safety testing, compliance and enforcement work. It is hard to overstate the importance of all of the recent call to Congress to substantially increase the CPSC's funding. This long overdue injection of resources will help to revitalize the agency and allow it to carry out its critical mission and meet the demands of today's complex, interconnected and ever-changing marketplace. In line with its ongoing commitments and work, the CPSC should once again lay out a bold vision for the upcoming fiscal year and keep the following in mind. First, we urge the Commission to promote a strong and inclusive safety culture within the CPSC that leads to meaningful changes in the marketplace. The agencies should conduct a public initiative that speeds up its actions and amplifies critical safety information to the public. The agency must also find ways to better identify, reach and serve historically disadvantaged and underserved communities. It is also essential for the CPSC to hire and promote people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives and for everyone at the agency to integrate inclusion and equity into all of their work. Second, the CPSC should keep setting a high bar for companies and holding them accountable if they fail to protect consumers from product defects and related hazards. To achieve this, the CPSC should use all of its compliance and enforcement tools as needed, including mandatory recalls, unilateral warnings and civil and criminal penalties. Third, as the Commission takes a bolder approach towards compliance, it should also continue to empower the CPSC staff to be vocal and persistent advocates for consumers. The agency should always start from a strong position in support of safety and reject weak half-measures that companies may seek and would fail to fully protect them, protect consumers. As part of this, the CPSC should make frequent use of its mandatory standards authorities and fully participate in voluntary standards development where it should push manufacturers to address known hazards expeditiously and completely. Furthermore, the agency should remove any barriers to transparency that may keep staff from pursuing consumer-centric approaches to product safety. In particular, it is critical for the CPSC to implement internal practices that maximize the public's access to important safety information to the greatest extent permitted by law. CPSC leadership should also explore ways to implement strong and lasting internal mechanisms to protect staff from pressures that may delay or derail critical safety work. Staff should always know their technical expertise in the service of safety wheel drive policy. In the long-term, these protections will allow the CPSC's work to result in greater public trust in consumer products, the marketplace, and the agency. With respect to specific hazards in today's marketplace, CR urges the CPSC to emphasize a handful of issues in particular. The CPSC should continue to work towards a strong mandatory standard for portable generators, especially to address the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. It should also remain vigilant and address hazards in infant and toddler products, including those with weak or non-existent voluntary standards. Lastly, even as CR advocates for the passage of the CERD Act in Congress, we urge the agency to continue working on a strong safety requirement for dresser stability. With at least three fatal furniture incidents, in just the last two months, it is vital for every commissioner to support having a strong mandatory standard in place without delay. Finally, I conclude my testimony with a simple request. I respectfully ask the commission to pay special attention to each and every parent's schedule to testify at this morning's hearing. Each of these parents' testimony is informed by their personal and heart-wrenching tragedies. Their participation in this public forum is motivated by their relentless pursuit to prevent future tragedies from happening to other countries, families. Their voices must inform and drive the agency's work to protect consumers from preventable incidents, injuries, and deaths. CR remains grateful for the agency's continued work to address hazards associated with consumer products. We look forward to working with you all in the fiscal year 2022 and beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much. Your first testimony before the commission was a big hit, at least with me, so welcome. Ms. Trista Hemsmith, Reese's Purpose, are you there? Hi. Oh, there she is. Trista, before you begin, I just wanted to make note of the fact that your congressman, Jody Arrington, has written a letter in support of your testimony and asked that it be made a part of the record, and we will do so. So thank you, and please thank your congressman. You make this- Thank you. Thank you guys for having me today. And of course, thank you all for the hard work you do to help keep our community safe. My ask today is for a mandatory standard to secure compartments that contain button batteries, whether it be a screw or a concealed compartment. Through my research, I've found that the cost of a screw, the actual screw is about two cents. There's also gonna have to be a mold made, and that's gonna be between $6,000 and $7,000, putting the cost of the screw on each device at about five cents, which is a very small amount of money when we look at the loss that can come from not having it. The loss of a child, what the siblings go through by losing a brother or sister, the financial cost of being in the hospital, which we personally know, it'll take a while to get out. In Australia, they made changes after only three deaths, and I'm really hoping that we can follow in their suit. I've been told that 3,500 ingestions isn't enough to work change. Rhys is one of those numbers, and I just wanna tell you a little bit about her today. She was a spunky spitfire. Joy eluded from her. Walk into the room with her, and you couldn't help but smile. She ingested a button battery and spent 47 days fighting for her life. After seven days, she had to be sedated, and that was the last time that we got to see her alive as her spunky self. She coded three times in her journey. Each time I was there, each time I saw, including the last time when they worked for 30 to 40 minutes to get her back. And ultimately, we just couldn't, and it was all from the ingestion of a button battery. So the 3,500 of all ages annually that are ingested, 2,800 children are in that number. Between 1977 and 2020, 65 children have died. Now I wanna point to the fact of under-reporting here. That is what we know of. Rhys was not reported. In fact, I reported her after two months of her passing away, which I will circle back to that. It has been estimated by the AAP that only 11% of ingestions are reported, which means the actual number is over 30,000 ingestions a year. New innovations can help with under-reporting. The new Global Injury Research Collaborative, G-I-R-C, reporting app for foreign body ingestions like button batteries will help capture actual photos of batteries and clinically relevant data. The iOS app store version is already available for medical professionals, and the Android Google Play version will be released in the coming week. 93% is the amount of growth in 2020 from the CPSC. I believe you all spoke to that earlier. The market trends, we're looking at how many more products are being made that are requiring these button batteries, which means there's more and more risk going into our homes that our children can get a hold of and end up with death or lifelong complications, things like having to dilate their esophagus monthly. I do know a family that has had to do that. As for Rhys, one doctor had said that it would be the third grade before she would be back normal. One minute. Among children, six and under, 61.8% come from a product, not the trash can, not loose, and not in packaging. Even if you see the button battery ingested, it immediately starts to damage. By the time that you get to the hospital, the damage is there. It's happening by the time it comes out. There's gonna be those burns. The current solution is not working. We need a greater emphasis on safety mandatory versus voluntary standards. It's my understanding that UL4200 is not automatically part of the certification checklist. It needs to be added to vertical standards, product by product, but as numerous diverse and ever-changing as products with button batteries, this is an impossible task. Products that parents consider safe are being missed and it's costing our babies our lives. I can't tell you how many of these ingestions would have been prevented had there been a screw or a mandatory closure. But I do know Reese would not have been able to have access to that battery. Currently education is being worked on and while I find that important, we cannot educate the curiosity out of a small child. Over 30,000 cases that could have ended like Reese's is like a horrible game of rushing roulette. Playing with the lives of our children because of an unsafe closure, my family's future is forever changed. We'll never get the opportunity to cheer her from the sidelines of the basketball game. Her sister will never get to take her prom dress shopping. A husband will never get to walk her down the aisle and I will never get to hold her babies. In closing, I want you to imagine that this was your child. The news of emergency surgery. I want you to think of their face and body and up to the tubes. Machines, the beeping and lights that happen in the hospital. And you know that a kid I went and doing so good.  I want you to think about how you would feel when you heard the words no pulse. Again, again and again. Picture them lifeless, blue and gone. Can you feel it? I want you to know as best as you can what it feels like to have your life taken away in a second. Now imagine knowing it was all preventable. Hey, we have a choice. Thank you so much for your testimony and thank you again for meeting with me and my staff and the senior staff of the agency. And if I understand correctly, you've met with all the commissioners so we greatly appreciate that. Next up is Remington Gregg from Public Citizen. Mr. Gregg. Good morning everyone. You may be good. Good morning. And good to see all of you before I begin. Obviously I want to take a moment to pay tribute to all the parent advocates who have come out today and who come out every day on behalf of these important topics. I believe in doing this work is important but it's my job and for these parent advocates they're simply doing it because it's right. When the CVSE was founded in 1972 it was designed to be a modern agency with strong regulatory authority and generous funding, broad participation in decision-making, widespread openness and substantial independence from White House influence. As the CVSE enters its half century in existence it's helpful to assess whether the CVSE is functioning as it was designed. Unfortunately it is not. My oral comments are just some of what I want to discuss what I tested my submitted testimony. On the subject of funding it is completely unreasonable to expect the agency to believe the marketplace of more than 15,000 products on its staggeringly low budget. According to Acting Chair Adler every year the CVSE deals with more injuries and deaths than NHTSA or OSHA or EMSHA or almost any other federal health and safety agency with bigger budgets than CVSE. And so I hope that that staggering statistic serves as a clarion call to every commissioner to strongly advocate for more funding. Without substantially more funding the agency will continue to struggle to meet all of the statutory and regulatory demands the agency faces and hamstrings the agency for being what it was truly designed to be. Now in 2008 a JAA report on data collection related to injuries of children of color concluded that, and I'm quoting, some research suggests that there are racial and ethnic disparities in child death rates due to injuries related to particular consumer products. However, CPSC not routinely assess whether such disparities exist primarily because the data limitations make it challenging to conduct such analysis. Since that report has been released it is unclear if the agency has been, has accepted or implemented any of the recommended actions. Since that time it's become even clearer that black and brown people have disproportionately lower health outcomes, life expectancies, incomes and household wealth than whites. All damning indictments on how society treats black and brown people. The CPSC's complicity in allowing these disparities to continue without addressing them is no better than the rest of society's values to do so. And so I hope the commission takes heed of the Biden-Harris administration's commitment to centering racial equity into its policy makers. And this should be done several ways. First, the mission should show a genuine commitment to listening to impacted communities and creating policies that address those concerns and that include meeting people in their communities. Second, the agency should do more to bring greater diversity in its ranks. Policymaking is informed by lived experiences and the lived experiences of leadership in the agency is far removed from the lived experiences of many black and brown people. Third commission should urge President Biden to consider diversity in nominating members to the commission. This includes racial diversity and a commitment to nominating consumer advocates. On the technology front, Public Citizen has continually urged the commission to collaborate with technologists and innovators, including those who have experience in the private sector to make saverproducts.gov and the nice platform work better. We once again urge the commission to heed this advice. We also urge the commission to support the CPSC-CIO Parity Act, which would require the agency to hire technologists to use innovation to tackle some of the most important issues the commission must address. Now, in closing, in the mid-1960s through the 1970s, Congress passed monumental consumer protection laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act, OSHA, and the Consumer Product Safety Act, which established in the commission. It was no surprise then that the era was dubbed the consumer decade. Over the past half century, Public Citizen has stood for the public interest in the face of well-resourced corporate opponents, and we are highly concerned that the ability of companies to stymie the work of the commission, through, for example, the voluntary standards process, has kept the agency from fully fulfilling its mission. The commission, however, can and must meet the moment by promulgating robust rules and standards to protect consumers, proactively working to get ahead of product safety hazards and engage with consumer advocates early and often on issues that they are seeing are problematic. Public Citizen and soon the CPSC itself will mark five decades of work on behalf of keeping consumers safe when we urge the agency to truly assess what is necessary for the agency to fulfill its mandate to protect consumers and their families, and be a visionary leader at home and abroad for product safety enforcement. We look forward to being a true partner in providing the commission the tools it needs to carry out its mission for the company. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony, Mr. Gregg. I now turn to Ms. Keisha Bowles from another day, another chance, Ms. Bowles. Ms. Bowles, have you enabled your camera and your microphone? I have, I have. I can't see you. So are you sure that you've enabled the camera as well? Yes, I have. It was working earlier. I'm not sure what's happening to it now. Do you want me to continue or? Please do continue since we can hear you and we appreciate your willingness to participate, even under strange circumstances. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, my name is Keisha Bowles and I live in Arkansas and I'm the mother of a two-year-old daughter, Sydney Chance Bowles. On the evening of April 3rd, 2012, I was preparing for bed and I was in the restroom as her and her brother were playing in his room. This was their nightly routine. Just a few minutes into the routine, Brandon ran into the restroom and he was crying out, the tea fell. My motherly instinct and the look on his face told me that something was not right. I immediately ran into his room and I saw something that will haunt me forever. I saw my chance, my beautiful, perfect baby girl underneath the dresser and she was unconscious. After hours of praying, waiting and meeting with the doctors, we had several tests, then more praying. The night turned into the next day. I had to make the hardest decision I'll ever make in my life. I had to remove my baby girl from life support. At 444 PM on April 4th at 2012, my baby girl lost her life to a TV and a furniture tip over incident. This is something that I never heard of before. Chance is not the first to die from a TV or a furniture tip over and sadly, she is not the last. Since her death, so many other children have lost their lives to the reality of unstable furniture in their homes. In just the past two months, I've spoken with two families who have lost their children recently. One family is in Atlanta and his name is Cason. He shares the same birthday as me. The other family is in Maryland. When will this end? I have also been speaking out about tip overs for almost a decade now. Yet the statistics do not, well, they have not changed much. Not only have many of us tip over parents formed our own organizations to spread awareness locally, but we've also formed parents to give against tip overs about three years ago. Still the safety standard has not changed and it's still a voluntary standard. We need the Consumer Product Safety Commission to continue making tip overs their highest priority and to move quickly and make this standard stronger and mandatory in your NPR. Back in 2018, when parents against temp overs met with the CPS commissioners to discuss tip overs, we said to you guys that we were not going away and that the next time you see us, there will be more of us. Fast forward three years and we still aren't going away and unfortunately there are more of us. This breaks my heart every day, but this will continue to be the case each month that passes until the standard for clothing units can be made mandatory and stronger standard by addressing dynamic forcing. Corporate flooring, loaded dressers and multiple drawers opened at once. Several of these factors play a role in chances death and they have still not been addressed by the furniture industry. And we hope that this can be done as soon as possible so that next time we meet, there won't be as many families meeting with us. Thank you for your time. And thank you so much for your testimony and I regret that we couldn't see you when you- I know, I'm so sorry. But it was still a very, very powerful testimony and we thank you again. And now I turn to Ms. Kristen Kearns from the American Peral and Footwear Association. Ms. Kearns, are you there? Hi, yes, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today. Can you hear me all right? Yes. Great, thank you. On behalf of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, I'm providing these comments today in regard to the CPSC's request for comments on the commission's agenda and priorities for the 2022 fiscal year. AAFA is the National Trade Association representing Apparel and Footwear and other sewn products companies and their suppliers, which compete in the global market. Representing more than 1,000 world famous named brands, we are the trusted public policy and political voice of the apparel and footwear industry, its management and shareholders and its nearly 4 million US workers. The priorities that we hope the commission will adopt are as follows. Addressing counterfeits as a safety issue. In response to conversations with the CPSC commissioners about potential product safety concerns created by counterfeit products, the American Apparel and Footwear Association continues working with our membership to gather information on this priority issue. We're seeking to understand how companies address counterfeits from a safety perspective, which specific hazards are most common to counterfeit goods and how the CPSC can collaborate on this issue. We hope that the CPSC will prioritize the leading role in stopping counterfeit goods from entering the US, working with CVP to develop a stronger system to detect counterfeits and using third party marketplaces to put in rigorous anti-counterfeit programs to protect consumers from the hazards of unregulated counterfeit products. Allowing garment labels to use digital information. We urge the CPSC to allow and encourage companies to use new technology to deliver required consumer facing product safety information such as tracking labels and other required information on children's products. Complicated international apparel labeling regulations have resulted in pages long, uncomfortable labels in garments and consumers too often report to our brands that the labels are itchy and irritating and remove those labels from their garments as a result. The labels sewn into a garment can often go beyond discomfort to cause the product safety hazards such as chafing and skinny irritation especially true for children. So companies who make children's clothing, athletic apparel under garments and other tight fitting performance apparel have been leading the way in creating technology to print labeling information either directly inside the garments to avoid an irritating label but only a limited amount of information can be printed directly on the garment. So those companies are also leading the way in the effort to digitalize information, labeling information. Irritating garment labels often lead consumers to move those labels from the garment which separates the garment from identifying information for the entirety of the rest of its life especially if it's a secondhand garment and a missing label can make it difficult or impossible for a consumer to identify the product to manufacture and other identifying information which would be necessary in the case of a recall. So since there is now technology to move product information that is currently present on a physical label to a digital space, we'd like to see the rules updated to permit easily accessible information online to satisfy labeling requirements. The result would be consumers having access to important garment information over the lifetime of the garment without having to sacrifice the comfort of the garment. This benefit also extends to solve issues with used and secondhand products being separated from labeling information as a label with the QR code or URL printed directly on the label that a consumer could input just by having internet access. That information would be less likely to be removed from the garment by having a digital access. Additionally, this technology would allow companies to update the information in a label to include compliance with new labeling information, recall and or safety information as that information becomes available. In conclusion, we're delighted to have a positive relationship with the commission and we believe that there are many opportunities for further collaboration. We look forward to working with the commission on safety issues created by counterfeit products, improving access to tracking label information and other labeling information through digital platforms, all for the benefit of consumer product safety and public health. Thank you again for your time and consideration. Thank you so much for your testimony. We greatly appreciate it. And Ms. Bowles, even though I can't see you, I thought I'd have one question that I'd like to ask you. We've had an education campaign going about the hazards of tip overs for quite some time, but I'm curious what you've gotten through. And I was wondering, when you talked to your friends and neighbors, how aware do you think are of what I think at times is the hidden hazard of furniture tip over? Do you have a sense of how many people have become more aware of this? They're not there yet. People are aware because we talk about it so much, but most people think that it's a freak accident. They're not aware of the dangers and how serious that it is. Yeah, and to me, that is the whole notion of hidden hazard. And so on that same point, Ms. Hansmith, and I want to thank you again for your willingness to meet me and myself. And again, your willingness to go through Reese's, I think with us. So I guess my question is when you took Reese to the doctor, how evident was it that the problem was a button cell battery? In other words, one of the problems with things like high powered magnets and things like button cell batteries, you take your child in and it's not clear what the problem is. Do you have any further observations or comments about how aware doctors and consumers should be about the hazards of button cell batteries?  Sorry about that. Absolutely, when we took her in, it seemed as though she had a cold. So she was diagnosed with a crook and as we know, button battery ingestion mimics crook. So she was originally diagnosed with that and given a steroid shot. It wasn't until the following day when we saw that there was a button battery missing in our home that we immediately took her in and said that we had the suspicion and thought that's right. Thank you so much. Ms. Shin, I really appreciate your testimony because in addition to calling for mandatory standards, which I, people who know me know, I'm not shy about pursuing mandatory standards, but there is a statistic that I always come back to in the almost 50 years of our existence, CPSC by my count, I might be off, has written roughly 70 mandatory safety standards. But in any given year, we participate in 75 voluntary standards proceeding. So voluntary standards are incredibly important to proper functioning of this agency and working with industry. So you have a number of excellent proposals, but one of the things I've been particularly concerned about is your call for open and balanced voluntary standards subcommittees and a fair standards development process. And I'm curious to the extent you've had experience because I know you're new at consumer reports, but do you have an opinion about the progress that groups like ANSI and ASTM and UL have been in promoting open and balanced drafting committees? So from my limited experience so far, I know that there are a lot of efforts underway to ensure that consumers are better informed and participate more in these standards. That said, I do hope to see more participation and more thought going into how to bring consumers into the fold of these standards development processes, especially since unlike us, it isn't their full-time job. This is something that they choose to do on their spare time or take time off from their full-time life and incorporate it into their life to participate in. And I look forward to working with with the standard development organizations, including ASTM, ANSI in helping to find ways to do that. And I hope that we can incorporate more of the consumer voice and stories into all of these standards. Thank you so much. Mr. Gregg, I'm sensitive to the calls that you made for racial equity in what the Consumer Product Safety Commission is and what the Consumer Product Safety Commission does. And I just wanted to assure you that we have been taking fairly significant steps towards promoting diversity at the agency, but also in seeing out and generating better information about underserved communities, which are quite often black and brown communities. So I just wanted to give you that bit of feedback. And if you have any further comments along those lines, I'd appreciate it. Well, that's good news to hear. Thank you. You know, I do think that we are seeing a reckoning within society of how can we ensure that we have not just quality, but equity in society. And I would just reiterate the point of you will only make good policy if you understand the lived experiences of everyone. And I'm not just talking about black and brown, obviously, but there's also rural. How do we deal with people in rural areas as well? So there, I think there's a lot more that can be done, but it's that the commission is taking a start. Yeah, and that's great, because it is what we call underserved communities that we're trying our best to reach out to. And Ms. Mills, do I have a few more seconds, or is my time pretty much up? You do, you have a few more seconds, you have about four seconds. Well, back to Mr. Gregg, you cite a point in an article that I wrote years ago that referred to CPSC as the most powerful federal regulatory agency ever created. And I just want to go on record and say, those aren't my words. And I never really believed that to be the case, but it was an observer. But given the limits imposed on our rulemaking by section seven and nine and the hurdles that we see by section six B, I'm wondering, do you have any specific suggestions for how we could be made, if not the most powerful regulatory agency, a more effective and powerful agency? Well, first, I think it's really important to actually get to where people are and to try to enact policies that have an everyday impact on people. That's a second strong, robust rules that focus on protecting consumers, actually getting the message out there of what the agency is meant to do. And I think part of that too is also more funding to be able to do more. You do an amazing job with the little that you had. And just imagine what you could do if you had more. And so I urge all commissioners to go to the appropriators and to urge them to give more. Because I think that giving more will really show or be a down payment on the, unleashing the potential of the entire agency. Thank you. And a quick question for Ms. Kearns. I'm very sympathetic to getting rid of itchy government labels that's something that drives me crazy. But I'm also nervous about having only a QFR code or a URL printed on a garment. And I'm wondering, is there a happy medium so that at least if you're gonna have a QFR or a URL, there's some instruction to use it and how to access them. I appreciate you flagging that concern. We're still in the discussion phase of proceeding with the creation of a digital system here. And so certainly open to discussion on what that might look like. Of course, understanding that the CPSC specifically tracking labels is the main overlap of labeling in apparel products and overlap in regulation there. So we've been primarily working with the FTC there, but happy to chat more about the commission's concerns about moving forward with a system like that. Yeah, well, those are my concerns. And I also have concerns about people who don't have cell phones to use. Those are my questions. Commissioner K, your questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna start, please, with Ms. Hamm Smith and ask you in terms of the commission's work plan for the next year. I was curious to know what specifically would you like to see the commission do to address coin cell batteries? Specifically, I would like for the voluntary standards to become mandatory. I would like to see a screw ideally on any devices containing a button battery. I know that there have also been talks about a simultaneous action that needs to take place. And I think that would work as well. The longer we wait, the more that we're gonna see these tragedies and continue getting the phone calls that they're happening. So my hope is that we can get this on the agenda and get some mandates taken care of to help protect our babies. Thank you for that. And do you see a difference between the UL horizontal standard requirements and the Australia standards? It's too early to tell on that. That's just been released. So it'll be interesting to see when the data comes in on it. Okay, would you give us the benefit of your thoughts as you have a chance to look at it more as to how you think we should proceed relative to either one or the other? I feel like proceeding with a screw on every device is the way to go. I obviously will be happy with getting anything that's gonna help to secure these batteries. I think about and I spoke with one of you all the other day about key fobs. When you have cheap plastic, even, you know that plastic can snap open and kids are gonna be able to get to it unless we're able to make sure that there's a stronger plastic. So for me, in our situation I know that had there been a screw on that device she would not have been able to get that battery. Got it, thank you for that. Mr. Greger, I wanna follow up with something the chairman was talking about with data and diversity. And he mentioned some of the efforts that are underway and you talked about two tracks that are equally important. It's not only what the agency looks like but it's also how the agency does its work. And so in our current year operating plan we have built in an attempt to build out the data that we collect to address underserved and vulnerable populations. I was wondering if you have specific suggestions even potentially beyond the night system of how we can improve our data collection. Well, I mean, so I decided to talk about these three things in particular because I think they all go together. So a chief technologist or more focused on technology could help you to receive better data. There are different systems, different websites throughout the federal government like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that drills down I think a bit more on the data that it has. So I do think that obviously the night system and getting more systems involved, more hospitals involved would be an important way to get better information. And then just, I'm not a technologist so that's why I urge you to work with them to find ways to get better use of data. You know, I feel like almost every agency at the moment now has some sort of CTO or technologist and so the agency would be well-searched in order to do that because they know much more than I do about where the blind spots are. Yeah, and thankfully we have built out our technology staff and so I think some of those things are underway but if you have additional thoughts as you surveyed other agencies, please know that we're always welcoming of that because we do want to get it right in terms of our better data collection. Ms. Bowles and Ms. Shin, in terms of tip overs, I'd like to give you both a chance to talk about the issue I asked to Mr. Horn and Ms. Ellis, which is do you feel that the CPSC, if we're addressing the four real-world conditions, are we gonna get it right or are there additional considerations that you might be seeing in the data that we need to take into consideration? I'll let Ms. Shin handle that one. Thanks, Kisha and thank you, Commissioner, for your question. Most critically right now, I think what's most critical right now is to implement and get a strong standard in place to at least address at the very minimum those four requirements because we do know that that is where a lot of the incidents occur. That said, I would have to look at the data more carefully right now and get back to you about which specific additional situations should be included but as Crystal and as Brett had mentioned in the previous panel, I do believe that the key is to accommodate and for real-world situations including dynamic force, especially, but as for other situations, I can definitely follow up with you in your office and give more feedback. Great, and I would ask actually that you follow up with everybody if there is additional feedback as well to the extent that we do put out an NPR course. Please provide that as part of the record. Absolutely. Well, I do have one thing. We could test the dynamics with the TV and furniture combos because that's what happened with my daughter. A lot of the statistics that I see, I don't see that that's been addressed a lot but that is where I live, a big factor. People have televisions on top of dressers and they do tip over so that could be tested a lot more. Great, thank you for adding that as well, Ms. Pauls. Mr. Chairman, I think my time has expired. Thank you so much, Commissioner Biacco. Your questions, please. Thank you. So I have to be honest and say that my colleagues have picked up every question that I had jotted down. So I think that's a good sign when we're all thinking a lot alike. Mr. Gregg, I agree with you, particularly on the technology issues. You probably already know this but we did hire a chief technologist and a chief data analytics officer and that's just the beginning. I've been a big supporter of moving forward with better equipment and more advanced technology. I think that the world we're operating in is an online world, which is what we've all experienced certainly during the pandemic more than ever. And we, the CPSC must be able to function on the same levels as the industry is operating. Whether it's a third-party platform or a individual retailer who is selling through the website, of course our imports and the different ways that products are getting into our homes, I do think is an area where the CPSC needs to invest and invest heavily. So I do hear you on those points. I always learn something from testimony at these hearings and this day is no exception and I appreciate all of you appearing here today submitting your written points and your discussions today. So thank you. That's all I have, Bob. Thanks so much, Commissioner Biacco, Dana and Commissioner Feldman, your questions, please. Thank you. I wanna start off just by acknowledging and thanking Ms. Hamsmith for being here today. It was incredibly powerful testimony. I wanna thank you not only for that but the time that you spent with my staff and I last week to tell us Reese's story and what not only she endured but the rest of your family. I want you to know that you're heard today and I look forward to being a partner with you going forward as we look to square the issues. Mr. Gregg, just to pick up on the broader topic of social justice and racial equity. Again, Commissioner Biacco mentioned the point that I was gonna raise. In addition to a chief technologist, we've hired a chief data analytics officer who I think would be well positioned to help drill down on some of the canvassing issues that you mentioned. I'd love your commitment to continue to work with us and the agency's new chief data analytics officer to make sure that we do have best practices in place so that we can make a serious sense in achieving that equity. I very much look forward to working with you on that. Thank you. And my last question is for Mr. Gregg and Ms. Shen and it has to do with small parts. It's my understanding that CPSC compliance staff still allow dangerous small parts to be sold as is or as toy accessories if they believe that the toy itself is appropriately age graded for three years and older. I personally believe that this is inconsistent with both the regulation and the official policy that's referenced in the regulation. I also believe, frankly, that it's dangerous. Do you think that we should continue to allow dangerous small parts to be sold on toys that are labeled three plus? I'm happy to take it unless you want to, Ori. Go ahead first, Ethan. Well, I don't think so. I would need to look into the issue more before saying something definitively but at core we have to be really careful about small parts and how they're labeled and the children that are using them. And as we've all said, we're now living at home 24 hours a day and there's just a lot that children can potentially get into and we have to be really careful to take that in mind. Again, as we're talking about policy making and the lived experience and keep all of that in mind as we are making policy. I think that's well said. Ms. Shen, excuse me. Thanks so much, Commissioner. And along the same lines, we're more than happy to continue work with you on this issue. I think we definitely need to have that conversation and make sure that it is in line as much as possible. But at this moment, I think that it is necessary to talk about it in more depth as we continue for the foreseeable future to be at home more and more. Thank you. I have no further questions. Thanks everybody for being here today. Again, and let me join with my colleagues in thanking the panels for a really superb set of presentations under somewhat challenging circumstances. We've now reached the end of the second panel and we have set aside one hour for lunch as I look at the time it's 11.41 and we will then reconvene in one hour, roughly at 12.45. Again, my heartiest thanks to all of those who've testified. We greatly appreciate it. So with that, we'll take a one hour break. Hi, I think one of the people on the phone has unmuted themselves. Hey, Steve, it's me, Steve. Steve, am I unmuted now? Can you folks hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, I was getting nervous because every time I unmuted myself, it said that you had me muted. Anyway, good afternoon everybody and I wanna welcome everybody back to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's annual public hearing on the Commission's agenda and priorities for fiscal year 2022. We're moving up to our last panel and I think the morning's panels have done a superb job and so we look forward to similar presentations this afternoon. I just wanna remind folks that each presenter will have five minutes to deliver their comments. Each commissioner will have five minutes for questions for each panel. Presenters, microphones will be muted and cameras turned off when their panel is not making a presentation. I don't think anybody has PowerPoint slides so I'm gonna skip this next point and I just wanna remind folks that because we don't have green, yellow, or red lights to guide the presenter's times, our wonderful secretary, Alberta Mills, will give a one minute orally and then tell you when your time is up. And after each panel, each commissioner will have five minutes for questions. And with that, we're going to convene our last panel and the following people will be present on the panel. First will be Chuck Samuels, representing the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, also known as AHAM, Karen Athenus, TIC Council of Americas, Margaret Lewis, Survivors for Good, Janna McGee. I hope I'm gonna pronounce this right, Janet. The Lifted, Megan Long, Connors Legacy Foundation and Linda Kaiser, Parents for Window Blind Safety. And with that, Chuck, I'm going to turn it over to you for your testimony and thank you for appearing. Thank you, Acting Chair Adler and commissioners for allowing AHAM to share our thoughts. First, let me say how much we appreciate the public service of you and your staff during this last most difficult year. AHAM represents manufacturers of major portable and floor care home appliances and our suppliers. Our members top priority is to design appliances that are as safe as they are useful. AHAM standard activities in safety are aimed at developing, evaluating and comments on proposals before SDOs such as UL and CSA. We have made and supported more than 100 safety proposals for appliances in the past nine years. Our education programs have educated millions of consumers on ways to properly and safely use appliances such as portable electric heaters, clothes dryers and cooking products. Our recommendations today fit well with the recent approach in the mid-year review and the congressional mandates on adding personnel to support efforts at the ports, including dealing with de minimis shipments, voluntary standards. AHAM strongly supports the CPSC's engagement and reliance on sound, periodically updated consensus safety standards. We support your ongoing proactive participation in standards development work supported by sufficient funding. CPSC staff, SDOs, industry and all other participants learn and benefit from the type of factual discussions and analyses at the granular technical level which occurred during consensus standards work. We regularly work with your staff on safety standards. The participation of staff is critical. One recent example is the standards work in the transition to more climate friendly but flammable refrigerants. There are critical deliberations for example on the safety standards for air conditioning equipment. A UL task force recently approved a revised standard for these products but only after thorough analysis and thoughtful participation by CPSC staff. Our asks of you, provide adequate funding and staff resources for participation in standards development activities. Do not eliminate or weaken the commission's reliance on consensus standards for home appliances. Addressing counterfeits. For years our industry has worked to shed light on the health and safety issues posed by counterfeit and gray market goods. This includes many meetings with the commission to highlight counterfeit refrigerator water filters on the significant health and safety risks they pose. We appreciate the commission's interest in this issue. Despite efforts, counterfeit appliances and replacement parts such as refrigerator water filters, air filters for air purifiers, replacement batteries, replacement toothbrush heads and vacuum bags still are widely available on e-commerce platforms. This is particularly relevant now as consumers are shopping more online during the pandemic and relying on products like water filters and air cleaners to help them achieve a healthy home. In many instances, counterfeits create health and safety risks for consumers that go undetected. Consumers purchase counterfeit products thinking they're buying genuine certified products to mitigate their concern about their drinking waters. Genuine filters remove harmful contaminants but the same cannot be said for counterfeit and deceptively labeled products. Our goal is to stop these products at the border by elevating this as a health and safety risk and to get the message out to consumers by partnering with CPSC and other agencies. Addressing the problem of counterfeit products requires a multi-pronged approach. Consumer education such as Aham's filter it out campaign, training at the ports to assist border agents to better identify and seize counterfeits and manufacture and online retailer coordination with government agencies. A more coordinated and strategic attention is needed and CPSC can play a critical role because you are trusted by consumers. Our asks, CPSC should move rapidly on the congressional mandate to increase inspectors at the nation's port. The commission should also allocate budget and resources toward communicating with consumers. We ask the commission to make a greater commitment to work with CBP, the IPR center, USPTO and other relevant government agencies. Very quickly, we respectfully but strongly disagree with the comments today about section 6B and your rulemaking provisions. I would like to see an objective, perhaps a GAO study on section six. We also think that your rulemaking provisions are appropriate for an independent agency with your regulatory authority. Thank you very much. I'd be glad to answer any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Samuels. And now I turn to Karen Athenus. Is it TIC Council or is it TIC? You remind me. There, can you hear me okay? Yes. It is TIC Council. But certainly many people call it TIC because it does mean the testing, inspection and certification industry. Okay, please proceed. Thank you. Thank you to the commissioners and you acting chair Adler for having me today. The TIC Council has long supported the work of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and we look forward to engaging with you and our fellow stakeholders on these important issues. On behalf of the TIC Council, America's, the organization and its members, we welcome CPSC's outreach to stakeholders and requesting inputs for the commission's agenda and priorities for fiscal year 2022. To further support the CPSC's work, TIC Council recommends the CPSC consider the effect the proliferation of counterfeits is having on consumer safety. In 2020, the TIC Council hosted a three-part virtual panel on the effect that counterfeit products are having on consumers and industry and explored the work underway at the agencies to address the growing issue. During the pandemic, the purchase of products online has skyrocketed and reports from fellow stakeholders have identified a proliferation in fake websites, fake products. And on behalf of the TIC industry, fake reports, certificates and marks. The labeling found on products is an easy and convenient way for consumers to confirm that products are energy efficient, meet safety standards and have been tested, inspected, and certified. But bad actors continue to degrade consumer confidence when they counterfeit TIC marks so as to pass off fake products is trustworthy. We asked the CPSC to work with TIC Council agencies and our industry partners to look for common sense solutions and raise the visibility of this issue with consumers. Second on the issue of digitalization, during the recent CPSC workshop on artificial intelligence and thank you so much for having that event, a theme carried throughout the event was innovating for safety. How can the industry as a whole work collaboratively to develop, design, and evaluate digital capable devices such as those with internet of things or artificial intelligence capability with safety as an integrated feature. The TIC Council was very thankful to participate in those discussions and encourages the CPSC to continue robust conversations with the TIC industry and our industry partners and consumers to explore these concepts and to build a framework for measurement evaluation and confirmation, establishing standards for data sets and new approaches for evaluating IoT and AI capable devices and designs and how best to manage the compliance of the devices over time. Third, preparing for tomorrow. During the pandemic supply chains were disrupted, businesses were forced to modify their work schedules, implement new policies for safe business practices and some unfortunately were forced to shut their doors. Now TIC industry is looking forward to a bright 2020 with industry reopening and individuals that were furloughed returning to work. Training early and often build safety into the earliest stages of the supply chain and it is a preventive and cost effective approach that will support industry as it rebuilds. TIC Council organizations have a long history of supporting industry as it prepares to meet the requirements of the CPSC and others and would welcome future participation and opportunities to work with CPSC in the private sector to make use of TIC member technical expertise and capabilities to help fulfill its mission and finally leveraging the private sector to confirm safety. In this turbulent time, the TIC Council members have supported industry and government by confirming the compliance of personal protective equipment and other devices and made use of remote options to conform the assessment to support the continued operation of businesses and we look forward to continuing our efforts in partnership with the CPSC in 2022. Conforming assessment is an effective strategy to reduce cost over time. Identifying and addressing non-conforming products can protect consumers and prevent costly recalls. Manufacturers can shop for services based on price, need or location and not be restricted by a single organization to review products. TIC Council looks forward to continuing to support industry and the CPSC's mission through our conforming assessment work. And finally in closing, the TIC Council will publish this year our study on the value of TIC and evaluation of the unique and powerful role that testing, inspection and certification and other forms of conforming assessment play in supporting governments and industry by acting to evaluate products, services and more to confirm their safety and reliability for consumers. It highlights the work ahead requires collaboration and open dialogue and we look forward to working together towards this beneficial change. The TIC Council looks forward to sharing the study with you upon its publication and to continue our engagement with you, the commissioners, our fellow stakeholders and others to move forward with this important work in confirming the safety of consumers. Thank you. And thank you so much for your comments. I now turn to Margaret Lewis, Survivors for Good. Ms. Lewis, are you out there? Ms. Lewis, would you check to see that you've got your video on and your audio turned on? I'm gonna give her another 10 seconds and then I hope we can come back to her if we've lost her. I regret that. Well, then I'm gonna turn to Janet McGee and ask for your testimony. And as I say, we will go back to see if we can track down Ms. Lewis. Absolutely. Thank you for giving me time today to speak. I'm Janet McGee, I'm here to urge you all to keep furniture tip-overs at the top of your priority list for this upcoming fiscal year. With three new child fatalities that we know of in the last six weeks from furniture tip-overs, this is still a very real problem that is happening in people's homes. Even despite the anchoring education and all of the research that's being done, that's still happening alongside that. We are quite simply just on a race against the clock. As all of you are aware, my 22-month-old son, Ted, died in 2016 from a dresser tip-over. And for the last five years, I've dedicated my time to learning more about the furniture tip-over issue, spreading awareness for anchoring furniture, advocating for stronger mandatory and mandatory furniture safety standards. I've participated in many ASTM furniture subcommittee meetings, co-founded an active member at parents against tip-overs. I even sell anchor kits through my company. There's nothing in my home that is freestanding anymore. Everything is either built in or anchored to the wall. When my two youngest kids started to climb on furniture, we obviously took that very seriously. And we're diligently teaching them not to climb. We have not called them their brother died this way, although they will learn that in time. Climbing on furniture is just dangerous here. I'd like to think I'm somewhat immune from a tip-over ever happening again because I feel like I know much more than the average consumer on this subject. However, just recently, my three and a half-year-old son, Mason, experienced a near miss with the nightstand, a type of furniture endlessly debated in ASTM meetings about the characteristics necessary to include in this standard for clothing storage units. We had moved this nightstand temporarily into our living room to hold some toys until I found the furniture I wanted to put on that wall. And even though many manufacturers in our ASTM meetings insist a nightstand shouldn't be covered by the CSU safety standard, the nightstand did come with an anchor kit. I chose not to use it because it seemed cheap and inadequate. And several parents have shared with me near miss stories of the anchor kit that they used that came with the piece of furniture. I opted to use the metal hangman anchor kit that I sell through my company, believing that it would be more reliable. I attached it to the back of the top piece of the nightstand. While I was working one night recently, my husband said our son opened the top for a nightstand and pushed down on it. Now, my son's three and a half-years-old. He weighs about 41 pounds. He's kind of big for his age. My husband immediately got up to stop him from doing this, but the entire unit ripped away from the anchor kit, causing it to crash to the ground. Luckily, my son jumped out of the way. The next day I contacted the furniture company to explain what happened, provide the units dimensions, where and when I bought it, the size of my son, so we could all learn from this. This is a company that I have a working relationship with. I've actually toured their facility in a neighboring state. I felt comfortable being very transparent about this so we could again learn from this. Their response to me didn't use the correct anchor kit I provided and I installed the hangman kit incorrectly. This is the problem. The blame remains shifted to consumers to finish making the furniture safe. And even with anchor kits, apparently I couldn't have even installed this correctly because there's no safe place on this piece of furniture to even install it because it was only pressed wood on the top. In addition, there is no approved ASTM standard for testing anchor kits.  I know you all know my face and I know that we're familiar with each other, but as a consumer, as a mom, as a tip over mom, what am I supposed to do? What furniture is safe to buy? What furniture is safe to put in my home? What anchor kits are going to keep my living children safe? And most importantly, when is enough enough?  Working with the CPSC is slow and bureaucratic. We all know that. And we sit here in 2021. Another year has passed. More children have died and suffered injuries. I'm glad that this time mine wasn't one of them, but the unit still fell over. Thank you for your time today. Thank you very much, Janet. We really appreciate that testimony. And I'm going to see again, if we have Margaret Lewis available, if not, I will move to Megan DeLong. Okay. Ms. DeLong, are you there and prepared to give testimony? Yes, you are. I am here and I believe my audio is on. It is, it's working, thanks. I first wanted to thank you guys for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today. As you said, my name is Megan DeLong and I am the founder of Connors Legacy Foundation, as well as a member of Parents Against Tip-Overs. I'm going to start by testimony out by saying some names. Meggy, Charlie, Shane, Curran, Camden, Ted, Chance, Harper, Maddie, Allie, Connor, Joseph, J.R., Kasin, Natalie, and as of last weekend, Hope. These are names I really want you to hear today and truly understand the magnitude that they died senselessly and unnecessarily, that their lives ended before they even had a chance to begin. And they're just a mere snippet of the names of 469 confirmed children between 2000 and 2019 that have died at the hands of this broken system, the inadequate voluntary standard that has stifled progress for two decades, progress that would address real-world scenarios. I mean, we know that an updated analysis from 2019 to current would include more deaths and I strongly feel that there are many, many more that have gone unreported.  Her name's Natalie. Less than one week ago, another beautiful little two-year-old girl was killed by a piece of furniture in her bedroom. Her name is Hope. Like so many of members of Parents Against Tip Overs, the guilt and the shame that these families feel is heavy. And right now immobilizing. Can you imagine walking into your child's room to start their day only to find their tiny body lifeless, crushed or trapped beneath the weight of a dresser? This is what happened to me on Mother's Day in 2017. I found my son Connor trapped under the weight of his dresser. As his brother stood in the crib watching, he watched his brother die.  But when I got into his, open the door, I saw his dresser tipped over. When I pulled back the dresser and pulled his body from the debris, he was still warm, but limp and lifeless. He was intubated on my living room floor. I stood there watching, holding his brother in utter shock, how could this be happening to me? I never saw his beautiful blue eyes again. This is just a glimpse into the nightmare that we never wake up from. And I truly, truly believe that as this was happening to me, as I realized the magnitude of the situation that my family, that was now my new reality, that I had failed my son as a parent that day. And we all wanna believe that our child will be the last, but as you know, the incidents continued to happen.  What I have come to understand throughout my advocacy is that I may have failed Connor, but the flawed system is failing consumers at every single turn. We know that there's a solution to the problem today. We know that the current voluntary standard is inadequate. I should also mention that not only does a dresser that killed my son meet the current voluntary standard, but it's also a go-to item for new parents as they try to replicate beautiful nurseries that they have seen marketed on the internet. One minute. Okay, I'm gonna try to speed up. I cannot single-handedly reach every single person, so I'm begging for your help. We need a mandatory standard that will require things to be tested for children up to 72 months old and account for real-world scenarios, such as dynamic force of a climbing child, loaded drawers, carpeting, need items pulled from the marketplace that do not meet the standard or have been involved in a fatality. We need this done now. We simply cannot wait for more children to die and we need it yesterday. We do not want more families to have to testify in front of you, but in just the last two months, three more children have died. I'm asking you today to put human life over profit margin and not just continue to make furniture to have over as a priority, but make them your top priority for the next fiscal year. I know the last year has put our world in bit of a holding pattern, but that is why it's even more important now than ever. Children are home, parents are working from home, our attention is pulled in a multitude of different directions. We should be able to feel confident that the items we purchase have been adequately tested for safety and will not kill our children while they sleep. We need your help. When we know better, we do better. Let's work together and do better. Thank you so much for your time. And thank you so much for what is very powerful testimony. I now turn to Linda Kaiser, Parents for Window Blind Safety. Ms. Kaiser, are you out there? I am out here. I don't have a webcam, unfortunately. Can you skip to the next slide? Thank you. Today, millions of hazardous courts hang in American homes that American consumers are completely unaware of. Manufacturers continue to produce window coverings with hazardous courts known to kill children within minutes of manipulation. We want to thank all of you. All the parents I speak for today, including myself, applaud the CPSC for including window covering, notice of proposed rulemaking in the fiscal year 21 operating plan. Swift movement to finalize a strong mandatory standard is now necessary due to continued delays for decades to open and expand the voluntary standard. We're asking for funds and staff time to advance the window covering mandatory standard for the fiscal year 22 and fiscal year 23. We also ask the CPSC to emphasize window covering safety and dedicate resources to create a strong impactful educational campaign to educate the public on hazardous courts associated with custom window coverings sold in today's market and older window coverings already installed in homes. Next slide. So we ask these actions for three reasons. One, CPSC, parents for window blind safety and the public were promised two years ago that the custom side of the ANSI safety standard would be opened immediately after passing an unsubstantiated safety standard that left long hazardous courts on products known to kill children in their sleep and play environments. This has not happened. Next slide. Two, the availability of non-compliant products on the market is widespread and the CPSC does not have the funding and the ability to adequately monitor compliance online nor at the ports. Next slide. And three, millions of hazardous old and new custom products are in American homes that the public is unaware of due to the lack of an educational campaign and misleading influencers, which is what I have on the slide here. Next slide. So you may say to yourself, oh, everyone knows about hazards posed by window covering cords. It's a no brainer. We've been talking about this for decades. This is wrong thinking. It's like believing everyone knows that squirrels are behind most power outages in the US or assuming that everyone knows that parents have the power to reason. Not everyone knows. Not everyone thinks like us safety geeks. So Zoe had no idea on May 23rd, 2020 that her son, who's on the far left, that would be the last day she saw her son alive. And Julie didn't know anything about the hazards of cord when her son, Luca, who's in the middle, was found unresponsive this past fall. And Charneese this past December had no idea that the product in her home was so deadly that Ethan on the far right would lose his life the day after his second birthday. Next slide. Cords are hazardous, period. So in our request about an educational campaign, we are requesting the CPSC give window covering safety the same attention and the same funding that tip over and pool safety campaigns have been given. We are not done here with window covering safety. The data clearly shows that children are able to gain access to cords in several ways. Unsuspecting consumers who follow current safety tips for custom products of cords continue to put children at risk when using cord cleats, tassels, and continuous loops. Next slide, please. The current WCMA standard leaves numerous risks unaddressed, including the long accessible operational cords, long accessible retractable cords, operational cords that form hazardous loops, inner cords on bamboo roll-up shades, faulty tension devices, and tie-down devices that can be pulled out of walls. So my plea to you as an advocate and a mother who's lost a child from hazardous cords is that the CPSC moves swiftly and implement a mandatory standard due to the failure of the current voluntary standard to effectively address known foreseeable risks posed by custom window coverings and the lack of commitment from the industry to address these risks. So I've worked on this issue so long, it's turned my hair white and I wish my webcam was on so you could see my hair is now white. But what will we see in the future if no action is taken? Custom corded faux blinds will be the top product line killing kids in the next 10 years. And this is due to faux corded blinds being a standard installed in new housing development and rented housing. So it's time to finalize a strong mandatory standard. Next slide, please. And create safer environments for children. So today on the voice of Julie and Chernise and Zo and hundreds of other families in the past decades who have suffered through the traumatic experience of finding a child hanging lifeless from a cord that was either labeled safe or considered no longer a threat due to following industry or CPSC safety's tips. And in the 19 years of advocating for window covering safety, the CPSC has never funded a major educational campaign for window coverings. It's time, the time is now. Thank you. And thank you so much for a very powerful testimony. Greatly appreciated. Finally, I'll turn again to see if we have Margaret Lewis, if she's able to join us.  Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Do you have your camera on or mask on? No, I'm gonna have to go without it. I'm in Salt Lake, taking care of some other situations here. And I don't have enough for a reception. My apologies. No problem whatsoever. We can hear you loud and clear, so please proceed. And you can just think about my business card. I think you know who I am. Yes. I remember you telling me you do recall that. So, you know, commissioners, I really wanted to talk to you directly, adult to adult. You know, Adler, Feldman, Bianco and Kay, you guys are really good at your jobs and you have to balance a lot of things.  You deal with a lot of issues. I'm gonna talk to you about some facts that I need you to really make it at a solid human level. Number one, the government's data of 4,000, that we always quote, that's 4,000 people that are injured by these annually, is grossly too low. I pull the data from the NIST system and I know you guys have that data. You'll find out there's 16 to 20,000 gasoline only related burn injuries annually. I'm always advocating for all flammable fuels, not just gasoline, but that's the only one I have a code for. So the 4,000 is grossly low. Take that number for a minute and think about the 4,000. That's 10 or 11 people a day.  So we've got a real problem of morbidity and mortality. Worse, these are multi-million dollar issues and we can prevent these. I'm not, as you know, all the work I did on the flammable fuel containers with HR806, it passed. You guys have the agency in charge. You saw the mandate come from Congress. Congress has given you all this data. You understand the facts, but I'm asking you to fund it. The CBO score was $4 million, or excuse me, $3 million over four years. I'm asking you to listen to the mandate from Congress and fund it at that level. We really need to stop this because all those 4,000 people burned a year. 1,000 of them are gonna be multi-million dollar injuries easily. That's a billion dollars in healthcare costs that's preventable. We have to warn people because we took the safety guard off.  Why it was taken off, not my problem. I feel like a failure. I've been working on this since 2014. I still go into burn units and meet with families and parents.  Parents doesn't yet understand what that means, but I do and you should understand that's amputation to various knuckles. Please think about the fact that there are 27 year old young man went after taking the bar exam in Texas. He was down in his basement, having beers with friends ended up in a burn unit. His mom had to sign off to amputate one leg from the knee down, later a second leg from the knee down, followed by finding out he was blind. But hey guys, you know what? He passed his bar exam. Damn it, this is not right. I'm asking you to think about how we can prevent this. It's like if we have guns and so we took the safety off of gun injuries and we had 100 or 200 gun related high school shootings every year, you would get the safety guard back on. We have 100 to 200 burn related injuries of high school kids every year. These are our children there in the STEM classes. These are preventable. We've got to educate the parents and the teachers and the students. We need to get this education campaign out there. You will make a difference. Today, you in your positions are the only ones that I can turn to and I'm standing here telling you I feel like a failure. Every year there's 3,999 moms just like me every year. I haven't been able to prevent this or stop it from happening to their kids and they played with me. I've had moms dig fingernails into my forearm asking me why. You know and I know this is the journey of our souls. I'm asking you to help me though because you are the only ones with the power and authority to put an INE campaign into place. I absolutely think the most effective way to do true safety and human factors is to have people that have suffered the consequences educate you. Keep in mind burn survivors are highly effective at changing human behavior. Let's get the word out. Let's teach people and train people about the risks, the hazards and the prevention skills. This is like anything else, learning to drive a car. My 16 year old daughters were both licensed by the state of California to drive an automobile and to fill it with gasoline. But somehow there was a label that said children under the age of 18 shouldn't be using a fireplace fuel. A fireplace fuel, fire rated safe for a ventless fireplace. Fireplace fuel. So I am never gonna stop. I will always stay after this. I am on a mission for the rest of my life to keep people out of burn units. I'm asking you to help me and how can I help you? I wanna represent this group of commissioners for the proud work that you're doing right now. We got HR 806. You absolutely need to help me get the campaign going. I wanna represent that CPSC is out for public safety and it's no longer gonna be considered the corporate profit safety commission. It's time to turn it back into the consumer product safety commission. Please help me to make sure that we turn this around. You guys, I'm here and I'm available. Let's talk through it and please know your work is amazing and it's hard. But here's something that's tangible, provable, definable. The morbidity and mortality rates are huge. That's everything I can lay out for you. I trust you guys to make the right decisions and I'll continue to work. Thank you. And thank you so much. And I just wanna point out that the advocates that we've just heard from in addition to bringing compelling and heartbreaking stories have all thought through substantive concrete steps that can be taken to promote safety. And so we thank you for both the courage and the willingness to share your stories and also for the very strong messages and advice given us. So I just wanna go on record as thanking you all. And so one of the things Janet McGee, I would like to, I don't know if this is a question, so much as a comment rather than seeking an answer, but I do think that the commission has established a tip over among other things as a very top, if not the top priority of the agency. But we're still years away if we're gonna follow the procedures that are set forth in the Consumer Product Safety Act from a final rule. And I find that disappointing. And so I'm hopeful that we may see some congressional assistance there.  And so this reinforces, it seems to me, the need not just for education, which is critical, but the need for redesign, as I've said on a number of occasions, redesigning products is much easier and more cost effective than redesigning consumers. So I just throw that out. And then if you have any response, please feel free, otherwise I do have some other questions. Thank you, I don't have any response. Okay, well, thank you so much. And I would like to ask Chuck Samuel a question and Chuck, I need to point out that when I was first a commissioner, I went out and gave a speech for Aham. I asked one of your senior executives, one of the senior executives at Aham, just to give me a listing of all the safety standards that are mandatory that govern Aham's products. And he said, there's only one and it's for refrigerator doors, which to me is a clear example of the effectiveness of collaboration between government and industry developing excellent voluntary standards. But on that point, you noted that Aham, in fact is a standard development organization, meaning you're accredited by ANSI to actually draft safety standards. And so I guess my question is relating to one of my ongoing concerns, and that is the degree of consumer participation in the development of voluntary standards. So two quick questions. Can you share how Aham recruits consumers to the standards you develop? And are you satisfied with the level of consumer involvement in your standards development? Well, let me make an important clarification. Aham does develop some standards which are performance standards. It does not develop any safety standards. It relies entirely on other STOs of which the most prominent are UL and CSA. Okay, I stand correct, thanks. Yeah, and they in turn, of course, are under some very strict procedures, both internally and externally in terms of ANSI, et cetera, in which there is quite a bit of outside participation, not just by CPSC staff, but by prominent groups depending on the activity. So for example, we have some activity going on now in which the pediatricians are very heavily involved. We often won't be involved with activity with UL or CSA in which the fire services are involved and sometimes consumer groups. I think finding a better balance is an ongoing effort and all standards groups can do better. Sometimes participation is limited when there are actual physical meetings, remember the good old days, and the cost of consumers and consumer groups being involved. Now that barrier, of course, has been lowered and hopefully it allows for greater participation. But we're very supportive of having as many, what are known as stakeholders, but real people, consumers involved in these activities. But I think UL and CSA do a pretty good job in our product categories. One minute. Oh, thank you so much. And I just have one final quick question for Ms. Athenus. You pointed out that the pandemic has put some companies out of business or placed them in financial distress. And one of the ongoing concerns I've had is the little mom and pop industries that are making toys that require third party certification. And I'm wondering, to your knowledge, have your members gone, taken any extra steps to try to accommodate these folks who are in financial distress in terms of getting third party certification? What I can say to that is that our members have developed programs where they can still perform their testing, inspection, and certification to the best possible through remote activities. They've also struggled through this pandemic because of travel restrictions, because of limited access. Some vendors weren't willing to invite us into their