Traps For the Unwary Under the Consumer Product Safety Act: Children's Products

Nestled in the morass known as the Consumer Product Safety Act (as amended by the dubiously titled Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and further amended in 2011) are provisions that can wreak havoc for businesses that manage, understandably, to overlook them.  What was once a rather straightforward reporting and recall system involving a relatively small number of federal safety standards has evolved into a complex beast of certifications, third-party testing, and training programs. While it is beyond the scope of this post to identify and discuss all of the requirements of these laws, there are some provisions that our readers should know about. This article addresses one of the thorniest of all: children’s products.

A host of new requirements apply to children’s products, and the determination of what is – and what is not – a children’s product is now no easy matter.  Generally speaking, a children’s product is one designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age or younger, but the CPSC’s own complex “interpretive guidance” on the question betrays the superficial simplicity of this inquiry.  There are almost no clear rules, and, on matters that could lend clarity to the situation, like a reliable product labeling/marking regime that would put the onus on parents and other responsible adults to keep certain products away from children, the CPSC manages to make things even murkier.