Tenenbaum Returns To Columbia, Speaks To SC Students About Safety

Former state superintendent of education Inez Tenenbaum on Tuesday made her first public appearance in South Carolina since becoming the head of the national Consumer Product Safety Commission. At Rosewood Elementary School in Columbia, she announced a back-to-school safety checklist for parents to go through to make sure their children are safe. Tenenbaum became head of the agency in June.

“It takes just a moment for a child to be seriously injured or even killed while riding a bicycle, playing on the playground, using a movable soccer goal, wearing a jacket with a drawstring, or by using a recalled product. So let’s keep kids in the classroom and out of the emergency room,“ she told students, teachers and parents.

Each year, more than 200,000 children nationwide end up in the emergency room because of playground injuries, so the first part of the checklist deals with playgrounds.

Here’s the checklist for parents:
PLAYGROUND
—I checked with my school’s officials to make sure that equipment has been inspected and maintained.

—There are at least 9 inches of shock-absorbing surface material around my school’s playground equipment.

BICYCLE HELMETS
—My child wears a helmet every time he/she bikes or rides a scooter to and from school.

—My child’s helmet fits snugly, level on top of the head, with a buckled chin strap.

DRAWSTRINGS
—None of my child’s outerwear clothing has drawstrings at the hood or neck area.

MOVABLE SOCCER GOALS
—All soccer goals are securely anchored when in use.

RECALLED PRODUCTS
—I have checked CPSC’s website to make sure all back-to-school purchases and previously owned items have not been recalled.

—I have signed up at cpsc.gov to have e-mail alerts of the CPSC recall announcements that interest me sent directly to my e-mail inbox.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been criticized in the past for not doing enough to protect consumers. But Tenenbaum says a law Congress passed last year, which gives the CPSC the power to levy fines up to $100,000 per incident and $15 million per series, will give the agency more authority.

She says under her chairmanship the agency will do more to contact consumers about products that have been recalled.

“One of the things that concerns me is that after we have recalled a product, many times consumers don’t get information about this and they will continue to use the product. And particularly with nurseries, products like cribs and bassinets, you will find that a child has suffocated or fallen between the slats when the bed had been recalled several years ago. So we’re trying, through the new media and a new technology program, to reach as many people as possible in the United States about these recalled products,“ she says.