Americans see great value in prioritizing children’s lives. We do more, and spend more, to protect kids than we do to protect ourselves. Today, CPSC incorporates that reality into our decision-making in a way that will make it easier for us to pass rules to protect kids. CPSC now says we will value saving a child’s life twice as much as before. And today’s action will not just improve CPSC’s rules—it is a model that every government agency can adopt, and should.
CPSC fights to protect kids by creating rules to save them from deadly product hazards, from inclined sleepers that kill babies to dressers that crush children. Despite the life-saving benefits of these rules, CPSC often faces an uphill battle against different industries that seem to value profit over children’s lives. But in that battle, we have just won a major victory. We’ve decided that a child’s life is worth more, and from here on out, our rules will reflect that. This means that we can pay extra attention when a child is harmed by a dangerous product—as we must.
“Cost-benefit analyses” have been used for decades as an industry tool to kill or weaken policies that would benefit American families but would harm corporate profits. When we proposed to correct that imbalance of priorities, I was shocked, but not surprised, to see that the Toy Association opposed us—they said that children merited no special treatment, that they were nothing more than “an arbitrary specific section of the population.”[1] Really? I wouldn’t want anyone who thinks like that within a mile of my kids, let alone selling them toys.
Giving extra weight to fighting products that kill kids isn’t just common sense, it’s also backed by decades of research into what Americans value most. And now, CPSC has just become the first federal agency to officially take this approach to product safety. I am proud that our agency has made the right choice for Americans. I expect that every other agency that makes rules to save children’s lives will adopt the approach put forth today. Safety opponents don’t make it easy for federal agencies to pass rules to best protect our kids…but today, we did.
The message to anti-safety members of industry is clear: your values are not my values…I value children’s lives a great deal. What I care about is saving the most valuable asset to our future as a nation—our children. I celebrate today’s win with all American families. Our new policy will save countless kids from horrible deaths.
Faithfully,
Your consumer advocate at the Consumer Product Safety Commission
Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr.
[1] The Toy Association, Comment on Proposed Draft Guidance for Estimating Value per Statistical Life, Dkt. No. CPSC-2023-0013 (May 23, 2023), https://www.regulations.gov/comment/CPSC-2023-0013-0003.