William Pryor: “I would like to talk about a provision in the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act that deals with a database…”

“I would like to talk about a provision in the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act that deals with a database to make sure information about dangerous products is available to the public. Here again, this has changed through the process. We have tried to build in safeguards. I want to talk about those. We have tried to find something that is balanced, that provides information, but also has some filtering so we make sure erroneous information is not disseminated. But the goal of this provision is that the public has the right to know when products are dangerous. We have many examples--and I will go through some of these right now. But I promise you, for every one example I am going to give, there are probably 100 others I could talk about--we have many examples of dangerous products that are being sold and used while the company and the CPSC know of the risks of the product. But because of the inability for CPSC to get a mandatory recall or the inability of them to work out the terms with the manufacturer in many cases, the public does not know about these dangerous products. So what happens is that the product continues to be sold and continues to be used when the Government and the manufacturer know it is a dangerous product.”