From teas and essential oils to drugs, faulty masks, and other medical products, COVID-19 has brought a wave of deceptive marketing and fraud.Early on in the pandemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)…
From faulty inclined sleepers to unsafe cribs, the infant product category has been on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) priority list for as long as we can remember. Now, the latest products under scrutiny are infant nursing pillows. …
It’s been over two years since carcinogenic nitrosamines were discovered in some widely used drugs. The discovery occurred in 2018 when the contaminant was found in active pharmaceutical ingredients in Valsartan, a blood pressure medication. Since th…
Thanks to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, adverse events – reports of injury, illness, death or product malfunction to name a few – are part of the public domain. This isn’t breaking news. But FDA’s release of a trove of social medi…
It may feel like COVID-19 is turning our lives upside down, sideways and backward over the last few months. For some, it has made daily life downright scary. And now, when soaps, disinfectants, and cleaning products are still hard to find on store sh…
To say the last few months have been turbulent for automotive manufacturers would be a colossal understatement. The coronavirus pandemic has had a profoundly negative impact on nearly every business sector, but automotive has been hit particularly ha…
Parents across Europe have been buying books, games and toys in volume over the last 10 weeks in a bid to keep children entertained while at home during the pandemic. Just last week (10 June) the BBC reported that retro tennis game Swingball has b…
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is continuing full steam ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic, recently announcing Dr. Jonathan Midgett as its appointed Consumer Ombudsman. According to the CPSC, the Consumer Ombudsman is a new pos…
Exponent, Inc. is a multi-disciplinary engineering and scientific consulting firm that brings together more than 90 technical disciplines to solve engineering, science, regulatory, and business issues for its clients. Exponent’s global support team i…
Each week we take a look at the items making it onto the Safety Gate Rapid Alert system for Europe to see what is causing major concern to those in charge of keeping consumers safe. And it is no surprise to see the likes of particle filter face ma…
With more than a fifth of the world’s population now enduring lockdown or severe social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents are struggling to juggle home-schooling children with their own disrupted work schedules. Aiming to gain a l…
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Council last month adopted a revised Recommendation on Consumer Product Safety. It outlines what the OECD sees as core elements of effective consumer product safety frameworks. Boiled …
It never rains but it pours and the disruption afflicting the clothing industry is set to get even worse with news that the EU environmental commission is planning new large-scale regulations. The statement from the EU environmental commissioner Virg…
Consumers around the world are fearful about the latest novel coronavirus (currently named “2019-nCoV”), which has so far infected tens of thousands of people and killed hundreds more. As with any major viral outbreak, concerns arise over the safety …
In the aftermath of widespread romaine lettuce, flour, and chicken-strip recalls in 2019, the U.S. PIRG Education Fund is calling for upgrades to food-safety regulation in the 2020 edition of its food safety report, “How Safe is Our Food?” In most c…