I am proud to support today’s rulemaking. Without the requirements set forth in this Rule, small and powerful magnets would continue to present the quintessential latent hazard to young children.
While I am confident that this Rule will achieve its intended purpose, I remain troubled about the prevalence of other small, powerful magnets that may persist in the home environment – be it from jewelry, defective or recalled products. Therefore I anticipate and urge the agency to not view this rulemaking as the final step in mitigating this hazard, but rather one element of an overall risk-management strategy.
Furthermore, I hope the harrowing recent history with this product category compels the agency and the entire safety community to reevaluate our collective capabilities to quickly identify and respond to emerging hazards. In this regard, the agency should accept the reality of limited resources internally and pursue every viable option to leverage our external stakeholders’ data for effective and timely market surveillance.