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Babies & Kids
Back-to-school: Have your school sign up for Safety Alerts
September 3, 2010 12:01 AM
ClickCheckProtect_logo Far too often, recalls and safety alerts don’t reach the consumers that need them the most. There’s typically only a 10 to 30 percent consumer response rate to recalls. That puts a lot of consumers who may never have received the information in harm’s way. Children are particularly vulnerable to risk of injury, illness, or death from unsafe foods and products. Busy parents are bombarded with information and often don’t hear about vital safety issues and recalls. So Consumers Union  set out to find a way to get safety into the homes of parents with school-age children.  

We’ve created a unique coalition of government agencies, parent organizations, and school administrators to disseminate recalls and safety alert information to parents and caregivers. The National School Safety Coalition, currently comprised of 21 members, puts the word out through www.clickcheckandprotect.org.

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Included is safety and recall information from the Consumer Product Safety Commission for unsafe products, and the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture for tainted foods.  You’ll also find internet safety and personal information from the Federal Trade Commission and, in the near future, health information from the Centers for Disease Control.

We’ve worked together with the National Parent Teacher Association and the National School Boards Association to form this coalition and developed innovative methods for getting safety information directly to parents through their children’s schools.

This program will go a long way towards warning families about unsafe products and foods. Make sure both you and your school subscribe to this free website www.clickcheckandprotect.org. Ask your PTA, school board, and school administrators to include it in newsletters and school websites so the information can be passed down to all parents and their children.

—Don Mays

National School Safety Coalition:

Tags: Babies & Kids | CPSC | Current Affairs | FDA | Food Safety | Laws and Government Agencies | Recalls | School Safety | All Cars Blog Categories

Post a Comment
Comments:
2
Mr. Daniel Bennett
September 17, 2010 2:57 PM

When I read this, I thought it might be of interest for the benefit of the school children and others.

Goerge Nathan
September 19, 2010 3:53 AM

Informing parents about safety hazards sounds like a good idea, but I'd like to see some evidence that beyond a certain point it actually works. I very much doubt that the compliance rate could be substantially increased by increasing the number of warnings or increasing noticeability. One of the problems is that there are already too many warnings and many apply to only relatively small populations. A parent needs to know at least three things: 1) that the danger is serious; 2)that it likely to affect them and; 3) the fix is neither complicated nor expensive.There must be powerful evidence for all three else parents will become sceptical about these warnings.Besides, parents have lots on their mind and can't always be bothered with safety issues.

Those who are beloved advocates of consumer warnings (such as CU) need to get practical and figure out what value increased knowledge of hazards will actually have.How about a pilot study?