New questions raised about Magnetix recalls and CPSC resources

We reported recently about the Consumer Product Safety Commission's latest efforts to crack down on magnets in toys — a program that included the recall of an additional 4 million Magnetix toy sets, and a new public education program about the dangers such hidden magnets present to children. That danger is very real. As the CPSC stated when announcing its new initiative, "Small magnets can kill children if two or more are swallowed.  If two or more magnets or magnetic components or a magnet and another metal object (such as a small metal ball) are swallowed separately, they can attract one another through intestinal walls.  This traps the magnets in place and can cause holes (perforations), twisting and/or blockage of the intestines, infection, blood poisoning (sepsis), and death. When multiple magnets are ingested surgery is required to remove the magnets and sometimes sections of the intestines need to be removed."

What the CPSC didn't go into in its April 19th announcement was the history of serious concerns consumers have had with Magnetix toys, issues that began before the agency's first Magnetix recall in March 2006. Now, that history has been laid out in an investigation published by the Chicago Tribune. According to the newspaper, caregivers had contacted the agency expressing concerns about the toys as far back as May 2005, months before the deadly November 2005 incident that led to the first recall. In one case, a preschool operator called the CPSC's hotline urging that action be taken after one of the children in her care required emergency surgery to remove ingested Magnetix magnets. According to the Tribune, "the magnets that doctors removed from the preschooler's intestines — corroded globs in a hospital specimen jar — sat in a drawer ... waiting for an investigator to examine them."

While the Tribune report focuses on how the CPSC is dealing with magnets in toys, it raises a larger issue — one that has concerned us as well: Whether the CPSC has the budget or resources to adequately protect American consumers. As the paper says, "the Reagan administration gutted the CPSC in the early 1980s, less than a decade after its inception. Bipartisan neglect since then has left the agency with fewer than half the number of employees it had in 1980 — deeper cuts than in any other federal health and safety regulator." We raised the same issue in this blog in February, when we examined the CPSC budget and concluded that "the agency has some real hurdles to overcome to keep fulfilling its mission." More recently, in the June issue of Consumer Reports, Consumers Union President Jim Guest added that "we are worried that the government bodies that stand between consumers and danger are hobbled by their budgets ... The CPSC is bracing to whittle its full-time staff even further. Cuts of 51 employees in the past two fiscal years have already drained the agency of some of its deepest knowledge and left it with the smallest staff in its history: just 401 full-time staffers. We can't afford losses like those." Giving the CPSC the right resources to fulfill its mission may not prevent another Magnetix-type tragedy from happening, but not doing so almost guarantees that it will. As Jim Guest says, "Money won't fix all the problems at federal safety agencies, but it's a start. Even if the current administration does little to encourage increased safety efforts, Congress should."