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and Cosmetic Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act

and the established agency authorities administering the provisions of

such acts. In the interests of uniform and consistent administration, the

authority over consumer product safety standard promulgation could be entrusted to a single agency. Fragmentation might result in substantial

variances in treatment and overlaps and omissions in coverage of the

consumer products for which a Federal safety presence is contemplated.)

CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY ACT OF 1971

FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1971

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 9:30 a.m. in room 5110, New Senate Office Building, Hon. William B. Spong, Jr., presiding. Present: Senators Spong and Cook.

OPENING STATEMENT BY SENATOR SPONG

Senator SPONG. The hearings will come to order.

The first pure food and drug law passed this Congress in 1906. Since that time no one has seriously doubted the responsibility of the Federal Government to guarantee the safety of consumer goods moving in commerce. Yet here we are eight decades into the 20th century and we are still confronted with the bitter litany of preventable product injuries.

Still saddled with products that burn, tear, shock, and poison. Still faced with the evidence of weak laws, weak-willed agencies, and woefully inadequate resources devoted to product safety.

I welcome the opportunity to chair these hearings. I believe-and said so at the time that the National Commission on Product Safety cut through the mass of data and bureaucratic gingerbread to the core of truth: We need a strong, independent consumer safety agency, with sufficient powers, adequate resources, and a mandate from Congress to get the job done right this time.

We are going to hear first this morning from Dr. A. Coleman, of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Coleman contributed grim statistics and sharp insights to the Product Safety Commission's investigations. I suppose that only a parent and a pediatrician can really comprehend the human tragedy that attends the needless, unforeseen injury of a child.

Dr. Coleman, if you would come forward, please.

Before you begin your testimony, I would preface with the question, What must we do to tame what appears to be an epidemic of productcaused injuries?

We are happy to have you here this morning.

66-631 0-71-pt. 1—20

STATEMENT OF DR. ALAN B. COLEMAN, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS; ACCOMPANIED BY GEORGE K. DEGNON, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT LIAISON

Dr. COLEMAN. Thank you, sir.

I am accompanied this morning by Mr. George Degnon, of the Department of Government Liaison of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We are very happy to have this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee.

As you know the American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of medical specialists in child care devoted to the improvement of child health in the United States. It represents most of the specialists in this field.

We very strongly support the idea and the concept of the legislation proposed and you will note that we were in direct cooperation and worked very closely with the National Commission on Product Safety during its all too brief life. I, too, was very happy to see how rapidly and easily such a commission could cut across redtape lines and go about its work without being bogged down as some of the larger agencies seem to be at some times.

We rather strongly support the idea of an independent agency rather than one added to all the rather unwieldy departments such as the Department of HEW. These departments get very large and complex and I note in S. 1797 that there is not even a recommendation for additional funding for this work, simply adding to the already overburdened budget of this very large department.

I think an example of our feeling about preventive packaging can be given in two major things which occurred recently. Because of the flurry of worrying about phosphate pollution of our streams a fair number of washing products have come out which have been low in phosphate. Unfortunately, in order to take phosphate out of a washing product and make it a good washing product so that it cleans you have to add a fair amount of alkali to it. Unfortunately, that makes the product rather dangerous for a child to eat.

Not connected with what I am about to say, only rather recently one of the executives of the American Academy of Pediatrics had a grandchild do exactly that in St. Louis and he got rather bad mouth burns. A similar product was seized by the FDA because it was so alkaline as to be extremely dangerous under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act.

It turns out that the Federal Hazardous Substances Act will allow that product to be reissued if the label is changed. We don't think little children can read labels. At the same time, the Poison Prevention Act which has been relatively slowly implemented by the same department is not yet in effect but this substance would be covered by the Poison Prevention Act, and indeed, we feel should not be issued unless put up in a child-resistant package.

Unfortunately, it takes a while for this type of machinery to get going and one would hope that an agency devoted only to product safety could cut across this type of line and get this done a little more rapidly.

Another example that I found out about only recently is in the flammable fabrics field. For a very long time, particularly in England, it has been known that one of the big dangers to children is flammable night clothing. It is a little more dangerous in England where they tend to have open fireplaces and what they call electric fires in the walls for heating, but even so flammable night clothing is a hazard.

We had hoped that one of the first actions of implementation in that act would be in the field of underclothing and night clothing for children. It now appears that despite all the distress of those who were anxious to get this legislation passed the proposition is that it be simply labeled as flammable rather than that a standard for noninflammable be passed. This is a recent proposal. I do not believe an independent consumer protection agency would have taken that tack.

We note that in section 3 of S. 1797 and in section 33 (b) of S. 983 hazards subject to previously promulgated regulations under other acts have been exempted. I believe that is a poor way to do this and we would hope that, whichever one of these acts is finally adopted, there would be an addition of a paragraph consolidating all of these rather that excluding all these.

For instance, it would be silly to exclude flammable fabrics and exclude substances under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act and even economic poisons under the Pesticide Act to the extent that they appear in household products. They certainly should not be excluded. Foods, drugs, and cosmetics, of course, the FDA has handled for a long time and very well, but we would hope that even if these substances are excluded from a consumer protection agency that their packages would not be so excluded and that the consumer protection agency would have major and primary responsibility for safe packaging.

We come back again to funding. S. 983 proposes specific funding, of course, for a separate agency. We note with some displeasure that the other bill, S. 1797, puts a great responsibility for a new segment of activity on the Department of HEW without giving them any money for it.

I might say in our opinion in the department which is greatly underfunded in many of its aspects of health-particularly in the aspect of child safety and consumer safety. I would say that S. 1797 has a paragraph in it that sounds very bad for the United States. That is the one about export.

The other bill, S. 983, rather correctly states that exported goods must be subject to the same regulations as those used domestically un less they conform with the country of export's standards or are exempted by it. I would not like to think that the rest of the world would feel that we were exporting shoddy goods that we wouldn't use for ourselves in our own domestic use in the United States.

Another aspect of the bill that is of concern is the portion on imminent hazards. S. 1797 would require the Department of HEW to go to court and seek an injunctive process through the courts in order to ban something which was considered imminently and immediately hazardous.

The other bill would allow more rapid action and would give the manufacturer judicial relief if they disagreed with the banning. We

would feel that if something is defined as an imminent hazard something more rapid than the courts' injunctive process should be available to whatever agency administers this bill.

The subpena powers listed in the acts seem to differ quite a bit. In S. 1797, the Secretary of the HEW would be empowered to subpena a record but not the people. I am not sure whether that was the exact intent of the persons who wrote the bill. We feel that the provisions in S. 983 for subpenaing persons and holding hearings is a rather complicated way to gather important data, as was shown by the hearings of the National Commission on Product Safety.

These are the major feelings about the bill, besides some of the more extensive remarks we have made in our accompanying statement.

Senator SPONG. We will admit the statement into the record in its entirety and are very appreciative for the comments that you have made on the statement itself.

Senator SPONG. Senator Cook.

Senator Cook. Dr. Coleman, you stressed that S. 1797 has no appropriation in it and that S. 983 calls for $5 million in 1971; $7.5 million in 1972; and $10 million in 1973.

I might say that when Secretary Richardson was here on the first day of these hearings he made it very plain that the Department had already earmarked approximately $40 million for the first year of operation within the framework of HEW for this facility. He said that the amounts of money set forth in S. 983 were woefully inadequate and that under the circumstances would really accomplish nothing.

I think it might be wrong to say that because a bill specifically sets forth appropriated funds and another bill does not that this makes the other bill totally and completely weak. The testimony in the record so far indicates that the amount of money set forth in S. 983 isn't even going to begin to do the job.

I can only say to you that I think they made it very clear at that time that they were prepared to earmark some $40 million for the first year's operation of this program regardless of whether it is S. 983 or S. 1797, or a combination of both.

The Commission and the chairman made it very plain that they were not talking in terms of a major testing facility. Yet HEW was talking in terms of a major facility and said that the logic of the thing was to combine the present testing facilities and facets of HEW, for instance, for flammable fabrics, and so on and so forth, and aggregate those into a major testing facility.

The Chairman of the Commission, within the framework of S. 983, made it very plain that he was not talking about a major testing facility at all. Don't you feel that if this is really going to function the it ought to function, that we have a major all-purpose, all-encompassing testing facility?

way

Dr. COLEMAN. Not being an engineer, I don't claim to be an expert on that field, but I would say this from what I know about the work of the Commission and how it functioned and the proposals that we have made. It would be quite feasible, I would think, to utilize other agencies of the Government and also contract facilities for the same purpose. I