Protect your health and safety by knowing current consumer product recalls

Posted on August 16, 2007 at 9:43 am

Did you know that currently there are over 28 million bottles of contact lens solution that are being recalled because they cause a serious eye infection? Or that a major supplier of toothpaste to hotels is recalling their product due to concerns that they have diethylene glycol, which is toxic for children and people with liver and kidney disease?

Everyday there are major recalls of consumer products ranging from car tires to baby toys and it’s important for your own safety to know which products are being recalled. There are simply too many recalls to be covered by the media unless it becomes very large, but it’s still good to know that the sausage you bought yesterday at Wal-Mart may have sulfites as an ingredient!

Here’s how you can keep up-to-date with the latest product recalls for food, cars, consumer products, medicines, etc. Many of the government agencies have web sites with the latest information posted.

US Consumer Product Safety Commission – Here you can search recalls by month, product type, company, or product description. For the month of August 2007, there were over 25 recalls listed on the site ranging from outdoor lounge chairs that fall when in a recline position to window blinds that are a strangulation hazard. Eeeks!
USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service – As the name suggest, this is the government entity that makes sure the food you eat at restaurants is safe. They have a list of Open Federal Cases for food recalls. This month, there was a recall on sausage and frozen turkey! There are also numbers listed for each recall where you can get more information to see if your area was effected or not. You can also receive updates via email if you like.
US Food and Drug Administration – They have recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts for the last 60 days. These are all Class I recalls, which means it’s a pretty big deal. You can read more here about the policies and what constitutes Class I, II, or II. You can also subscribe to the alerts via a RSS reader.
Consumer Reports – Consumer reports has a blog that is kept very up-to-date with the latest recall information, what the problem is, how many people are affected and in what states, and what you can do if you have questions. I really like this site the best out of them all because it’s a blog and hence not written in a news type of way, but like a casual discussion. They even give in depth tips on what to do if you find out you are a victim of one of the recalls.
Recalls.gov – Finally, there is a special site of the government’s that is solely dedicated to recalls across all industries and categories. Here you’ll find the recalls split into products, foods, motor vehicles, boats, meats, and environment.

By checking on these sites or getting updates via email or RSS, you can help protect yourself, your children and others. Personally, I feel that one of the worst ways to pass away would be to use a product that was being recalled, but that I didn’t know was posing a danger! So don’t take these things lightly because you never know when it could happen to you!

Any other suggestions, post a comment!

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12806918

[tags]recalled products, product recalls, consumer product recalls, safety recalls, recalled baby products, recalled toys[/tags]

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