I joined Scott Wolfson, communications director at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, as a guest on Angie Coiro’s “In Deep” radio show to discuss the Buckyballs case and safety regulation generally. Earlier in the same segment was ZenMagnets.com founder Shihan Qu, who is also battling the CPSC on the desk magnet issue. You can listen here. My coverage of the Buckyballs controversy is here and we also discussed a number of other noteworthy controversies including state attorneys general’s efforts to shut down the “Prescription: Coffee” mug and the status of dangerous consumer items home-produced by way of 3-D printers. CPSC Commissioner Nancy Nord’s statement on the magnet set issue is here.
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obligatory Onion reference:
Earth To Be Made Child-Safe
News • children • ISSUE 30•06 • Sep 18, 1996
NEW YORK—Under heavy pressure from safety-conscious parents groups around the world, the U.N. General Assembly approved a plan yesterday to make the earth child-safe by the year 2000.
Renamed the Sportin’ Kids Family Fun Play Globe, the planet will be biologically and topographically overhauled to provide youngsters worldwide with a safe, unimposing, family-oriented environment full of colorful, round-edged objects and plush items.
read the whole thing at
http://www.theonion.com/articles/earth-to-be-made-childsafe,1088/
Or nearly a century ago, Arthur Guiterman’s “Strictly Germ-proof” —
THE Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup
Were playing in the garden when the Bunny gamboled up;
They looked upon the Creature with a loathing undisguised;—
It wasn’t Disinfected and it wasn’t Sterilized.
They said it was a Microbe and a Hotbed of Disease;
They steamed it in a vapor of a thousand-odd degrees;
They froze it in a freezer that was cold as Banished Hope
And washed it in permanganate with carbolated soap.
. . .
The entire poem is at Bartleby:
http://www.bartleby.com/104/50.html