Kids In Danger

KID 10th Anniversary Logo

Kids in Danger (KID) is an American non-profit dedicated to educating parents, training engineers, designers, and manufacturers, and advocating for improvements in children's product safety in cribs, toys, bathtub seats, bunk beds, car seats, carriers, costumes, crib bumpers, high chairs, gates, play yards, strollers, walkers, and other potentially dangerous items. Its website supplies listings of products recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission as well as providing suggestions and information on how to protect children. KID also works alongside other groups such as the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union in order to improve product safety.^[1]

Background

KID was founded in 1998 by two Chicago parents, Linda Ginzel and Boaz Keysar who are professors at the University of Chicago after their son Danny was killed by a crib that had been recalled five years previously.^[2] Danny's parents resolved to take action and founded KID. Congressman Bobby L. Rush and Senator Dick Durbin, both of Illinois, held hearings on the topic of dangerous children's toys in June, 2007 at which KID's Executive Director Nancy Cowles testified along with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and others.^[3]

In 2005, Illinois passed legislation that required the Illinois Department of Public Health to place children's product recalls on its website as well as to link to the CPSC site^[4]

In September, 2007, the head of the CPSC testified on product safety in Congress and one report noted "After years of sparsely attended congressional hearings, Nancy A. Nord, acting chairman of the CPSC, was greeted by a standing-room-only crowd at her September appearance before a Senate subcommittee. By then, retailers had begun retesting their inventory and recalls of lead-laced toys became almost daily events."^[5]

The Consumer Product Safety Commission began to act on lead in children's toys in January, 2008. KID's Cowles observed that quicker action in this area "would have made safer products available sooner".^[6]

What KID Does

KID is dedicated to improving the protection of children through improving the safety of children's products.^[7] KID focuses on three primary areas. One focus involves educating parents and caregivers in how to protect their children with a three-step program that includes: 1-Learning about recalls through checking with consumer agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission and at KID's site, 2-Searching inside the home for dangerous products and 3-Staying alert to potential problems and making others aware of what has become known.^[8]

Second, KID actively participates in programs that promote training in this area for a variety of groups. "Safe from the Start" is a program that teaches parents and caregivers about product safety.^[9]

KID's third program "Teach Early Safety Testing" is geared toward designers and engineers who create and develop these products.^[10] A third program run by KID is called "Test It Now". This program is a grassroots awareness campaign for ensuring that the public is aware of current dangerous practices, encouraging policymakers to produce change, and challenging the Consumer Product Safety Commission to sharpen its current operations.^[11]

Context on Children's Product Safety

KID produces monthly newsletters that cover recent developments and recalls in children's products.^[12] In depth research on product safety topics is another ongoing project of the group.^[13] Funded by an ethics grant from the Kemper Foundation, a case study entitled The Playskool Travel-Lite Crib was published.^[14] A book entitled It's No Accident,^[15][16] was written on this topic.

State legislators have passed and are in various stages of passing laws known generally as "The Children's Product Safety Act." One feature of these laws is the prohibition on the sale or lease of any children's product that has been recalled.^[17] Illinois, for example, passed this legislation in 1999. ^[18] Arkansas, in addition to passing its Child Product Safety Act, maintains a special website located at http://www.childproductsafety.com/ that provides details on the legislation, recalls by year, recalls by category, and recalls by company.

In late July, 2008, federal legislators reached agreement on improving children's product safety. The course of KID's role in the legislation and the portion of the law named in honor of Danny Keysar was described in the Chicago Tribune as follows:

Ginzel has spent the last decade pushing for tougher testing of children's products before they're sold and more effective ways of sweeping dangerous products off store shelves...."We'd rather have our son," Ginzel said, choking up. "But whatever we can do to protect other families-it's not really a choice we can make. It's something we have to do"....

That part of the law (named after Danny Keysar) forces the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to enact tougher safety rules for durable nursery products, including cribs, and requires that manufacturers test their products to those standards before they're sold.

^[19]

Further reading

• "How Danny Died", Jonathan Eig, Chicago Magazine, November, 1998.
• "Why Danny Died: Cribs and Other Potentially Dangerous Products-the Advocates' Perspective," Boaz Keysar and Linda Ginzel, Pediatric Annals 27:9, September, 2008, pp. 646–651.

References

External links

• website