Is CPSC Suddenly Hot for Flame Arrestors?

If you read NBC News’ website, you might think that CPSC staffers are suddenly focused on gasoline containers and flame arrestors or even that CPSC is reversing course on the matter and issuing proclamations to industry.

NBC, in a story titled Consumer Panel Calls for Flame Arresters on Gas Cans after NBC Report, claimed, “In response to an NBC News investigation, the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday called for manufacturers to add flame arresters to plastic gas cans to help prevent gas vapors from triggering explosions.” It even linked to a document sent by CPSC to NBC in which the agency said “that this technology … should be included in gasoline containers.”

NBC further noted that this media statement included CPSC's assertion, “CPSC is calling on the industry to regain the momentum that was lost in years past by designing their products to include this safety technology.” (Law360 also quoted this statement in a story titled CPSC Calls for New Controls on Portable Gas Cans.)

I suppose it is true enough that CPSC’s declarations were in response to NBC looking into the issue. What seems misleading to me, however, is NBC’s implication that the news organization somehow is prompting CPSC to take action on the issue – that somehow CPSC is ramping up its demands on industry.

I see no evidence of that. What NBC presents is merely CPSC’s statement to the media describing its position on the matter. That’s something quite different than CPSC issuing a directive to industry, new or otherwise.

What I find even more troubling in the NBC story is how it treats another agency document: A 2011 letter to former CPSC Chairman Hal Stratton (who left in 2006), declining to docket as a petition a letter he sent. Former CPSC General Counsel Cheryl Falvey wrote to Stratton that his communication did not contain enough information to meet the standards for docketing a petition.

Although NBC explains this petition-docketing minutia, it also compares the two documents to declare that CPSC’s new media statement “represents a change of position for the agency, which two years ago declined to issue a regulation.”

Hold on. A CPSC staffer writing a letter explaining that a document does not meet the standards for a petition is not the same thing as declining to issue a regulation.

I likely wouldn’t use the phrase “declined to issue a regulation” even if the situation had risen to the level of a staff recommendation on the matter in a briefing package. I probably would reserve it for something like a commission-level vote nixing a staff recommendation.

I find it interesting that if you read to the end of the NBC story, at paragraph 24 (how many people read that far?), you’ll start to see information that if not contradicting the headline and lede, at least severely tempers the hullabaloo.

NBC acknowledges that CPSC has not said it is moving towards a rulemaking (So how is this a reversal from declining to issue a rule?), and it describes the legal restrictions on CPSC related to relying first on voluntary standards. It further points to an industry statement that – correctly in my opinion – frames the situation as CPSC expressing its position in the context of the ongoing work at ASTM and the related testing of various flame arrestor configurations.

That matches not only what is generally typical in such situations, but also specifically what Product Safety Letter learned by listening to an ASTM task group meeting that occurred a few days before the NBC story. Rather than issuing demands, CPSC staffers are helpfully participating in industry's flame arrestor discussion, and we wrote that they “offered to supply some statistical modeling to help the group determine the proper number of cycles for testing.”

For now, CPSC appears to be working within the consensus standards process.

Indeed, in the agency’s recent fiscal 2014 operating plan, the issue of flame arrestors gets a single mention in one line of a chart describing areas where CPSC is confining its work to consensus standards.

Moreover, in our story on the recent commission-level discussion on the draft operating plan, we described commissioners and staff as focused on other issues and concerned with accomplishing goals despite CPSC’s small (and possibly soon-to-be diminished) budget.

Thus it would surprise me if CPSC were doing anything more than simply – and boringly – confirming that it is doing what it already was doing. I see no evidence of such a surprising development.

That boring element is important. What I believe is going on is the desire to create a more exciting story and one that implies the news organization’s influence.

I see this temptation play out all the time in stories about CPSC. Most frequently, I’ll see headlines and ledes declaring something like “CPSC launches an investigation into ____ in response to ____’s exclusive in-depth report on _____ incident.”

What really happens – and I’ve confirmed this from time to time – is that a reporter asks CPSC what it is doing about a situation and learns that CPSC is looking into the matter – as it regularly does in the context of its boring, routine follow-up to incident reports.

But “launched an investigation” gets more readers – more clicks – than “confirmed it is doing what it always does in such situations.”

Product Safety Letter is different. I find it amusing that I consider boring to be a marketing strong point, but I do. I’m interested in giving my readers the facts, not in entertaining them or arousing them. I loathe hyperbole, and I detest “click-bait” headlines.

Moreover, we show up. I subscribe to Woody Allen’s standard that 80% of success is showing up, and so we cover the boring meetings (and boy can they be boring).

For example, besides the flame arrestor meeting, for our current issue we also covered sessions on adult bed rails, infant bouncers, detachable cords on slow cookers, and safety closures for poisonous liquid products. We also recently sat through meetings on age grading, phthalates, testing and certification, heavy metals in jewelry, injuries from table saws, the CPSIA challenges for promotional products, flame retardant toxicity, pool drains, and bassinets.

That’s all since late November.

We do this week-to-week, 50 issues a year, hundreds of meetings a year. No one else does. Probably 99% of the time, we’re the only news organization covering the meetings. I suppose that makes the resulting stories “exclusive,” but, honestly, that word implies something less boring than the truth: “written by the only one who bothered to show up.” Maybe unique is a better word.

Regardless, PSL is the only place you’ll get such a high level of coverage of CPSC, the standards-making process, and other product safety issues.

PSL has been doing this since 1972, and I have since 1989. This has given us the knowledge to put situations into context and make sure our readers know what’s really going on – even if the truth is less exciting than how we might be able arrange the facts to portray it.

If you haven’t tried PSL or want to again, I urge you to get a free three-week, trial subscription. You’ll see that it is a unique and valuable publication. After your trial, you can subscribe and start 2014 off more informed and thus better able to do your job.

Your work is too important to be excited but misled. You’re better off being in-the-know but sometimes bored.