Through its compliance program, CPSC investigates and acts on product safety hazards and violations of its safety regulations. The Consumer Product Safety Act recognizes that manufacturers, distributors and retailers are a good source for identifying these hazards by requiring them to report violations of CPSC safety standards, a product defect that could create a substantial risk of injury, or a product that creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death. In addition, CPSC initiates investigations, following-up on leads from many sources including consumer complaints, trade complaints, coroner reports, and newspaper articles. These investigations often lead to the correction of products before injuries or deaths occur, revision to or new voluntary safety standards and, when needed, CPSC mandatory safety standards or bans.

Reports of product hazards from firms reached an all-time high in 1995. In 1990, Congress broadened the circumstances under which industry must report potentially hazardous products. To encourage this reporting, CPSC's developed outreach efforts to inform the industry about its responsibility to report product hazards to the Agency in a timely manner. Manufacturers, distributors and retailers have increased their reports to CPSC by over 50 percent since 1990 (from 162 reports in 1990 to 245 in 1995). This timely reporting and correction of problems by firms can have the beneficial side effect for manufacturers of less exposure to product liability claims and reduced insurance premiums.

Defective consumer products are recalled preventing injuries and deaths. In 1994, firms working with CPSC voluntarily conducted 330 recalls involving more than 11 million consumer products. For example, a company conducted a recall of playpens that could collapse causing infants to be caught by the neck and strangle; CPSC embarked on a major cooperative recall program for zippered bean bag chairs to prevent children and toddlers from being suffocated by the foam-like pellets after they crawled inside the bean bag chairs; and CPSC surveillance activities resulted in the identification and recall of faulty Christmas lights that may pose a fire or electric shock hazard.

Industry-wide problems are identified and corrected. CPSC, working with industry, has successfully resolved hazards involving a wide variety of products including cribs, drawstrings on children's outer garments, infant cushions, wooden bunk beds, and, tubular metal bunk beds.

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