What does Taylor Swift have to do with product safety? According to the panelists who took the stage for the first plenary session at the ICPHSO Annual Meeting & Training Symposium, quite a lot. As the opening lyric reminded the room, looking backward may be the only way to look forward.
Moderated by Molly Lynyak of ASTM International and featuring Joan Lawrence of The Toy Association, Cheryl Falvey of Crowell & Moring, and Dana Baiocco of Clyde & Co., the panel walked through more than five decades of product safety history — and drew some sharp lessons for where the industry goes next.
A Journey Through Three Eras
The story of product safety in the United States begins in the 1970s — a time when, as the panelists noted, we were all relatively naive about the risks posed by everyday consumer products — and the eventual establishment of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 1972. Through the 1980s, Congress amended several acts to allow the CPSC to rely on voluntary standards rather than mandatory ones — an approach grounded in the belief that industry would substantially comply.
That approach worked, until it didn’t. A series of high-profile recalls in 2007 involving pet food, infant formula, and toys with excessive lead paint exposed a critical breakdown in the global supply chain and set the stage for the next era.
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) marked a fundamental shift: Congress moved to mandate compliance rather than rely on voluntary standards, introducing mandatory testing and certification requirements and directing the CPSC to work with Customs and Border Protection to enforce those requirements at the ports.
Today, the industry stands at the threshold of a third era — one shaped by online marketplaces, influencer culture, artificial intelligence, and evolving questions about what effective regulation and enforcement should look like in a world that Congress could not have anticipated when it enacted the Consumer Product Safety Act.
When Voluntary Standards Meet a Global Supply Chain
A central tension the panelists discussed was whether voluntary standards can provide sufficient protection for consumers as compared to mandatory laws in a globalized supply chain. The CPSC lost sight of whether products were substantially compliant with voluntary standards, and Congress responded by mandating compliance levels for lead and phthalates, toy and durable infant product standards, and introducing testing and certification requirements to make compliance stick at the ports.
The challenge has not gone away. Today, non-compliant products are still entering the ports, and fake certifications continue to get through. A recent Toy Association study found that 89% of products sampled from various online marketplace sites failed safety testing or had issues with age-grading and warnings.
Looking ahead, the panelists were clear about where the focus needs to be: rigorous testing and certification remain foundational, and the next frontier is ensuring that certifications cannot be fraudulently replicated to facilitate unlawful entry at the ports.
The Underrated Power of Consumer Education
One of the most consistent messages from the panel was that education is not a secondary tool — it is an essential pillar of product safety that must go hand-in-hand with product regulation, and one that has been chronically underfunded and underutilized.
Historical campaigns offer compelling proof. The refrigerator safety campaign to prevent child entrapment paired a design mandate with sustained consumer outreach — and it worked. Ads were placed on the comics page of local newspapers, pamphlets were distributed, and the message was kept simple and actionable.
The children’s car seat campaign followed a similar playbook: it started with the data — road injuries among children are among the most preventable, and more than half of all car seats are not installed correctly — and built from there, using community ambassadors and sustained outreach to reach new parents at every stage of a child’s development.
The pool drain safety campaign, launched around the time of the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act, demonstrated that education and regulation can coexist powerfully. The CPSC used grant funding to go directly into communities, partnering with Olympic swimmers Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps to deliver a grassroots safety message about the entrapment risk — because some risks simply cannot be designed out of a product.
The e-bike conversation brought this point home for the present day: while the risk of e-bike batteries catching fire in garages is addressable through regulation of their design, the significant risk of how riders interact with other vehicles and share public spaces demands public awareness and education. CPSC cannot regulate rider behavior as much as it may want to try. Education is the answer.
Rethinking How We Measure Success
Perhaps the most thought-provoking theme of the panel was a deceptively simple question: how do we know when the system is working? The answer, the panelists offered, lies in outcomes, not outputs. The reason we revisit refrigerator regulations today is because fewer children died. That is what success looks like.
But in recent years, the CPSC has increasingly measured its success simply through recall numbers and penalty amounts, a metric the panel challenged directly. Fewer recalls may actually be a better indicator that the CPSC is doing its job, because it suggests products are safer before they ever reach consumers.
The panelists also raised a pointed question about standards development: when incidents occur, the first question should be whether the product actually complied with existing standards. If it did not, the answer is enforcement. If it did, and incidents still occurred, then the standard itself may need to be revisited.
Ultimately, the panel called for a return to first principles: the CPSC’s charge is to protect consumers from unreasonable risk of harm. The panel recommended getting back to that standard, grounded in reasonableness, genuine collaboration between industry and regulators, and data-driven decision-making.
The Takeaway
The “Product Safety Eras Tour” was more than a history lesson, it was a roadmap. The product safety community has faced moments of crisis before, adapted, and emerged stronger. The tools that worked in earlier eras, rigorous, data-driven standards, meaningful education campaigns, and honest measurement of outcomes, are the same tools that will be needed to meet the challenges of the era ahead.
For manufacturers, retailers, and regulators alike, the call to action is straightforward: do not wait for the next crisis to course-correct. Invest in compliance and consumer education now, measure success by the outcomes that actually matter, and approach the next era of product safety with the same ingenuity and collaboration that shaped the ones before it.
The tour is not over. The next era is just beginning.
Stay tuned for more from our ICPHSO Annual Meeting & Training Symposium recap series.