The Wall Street Journal reported that American manufacturers of laundry detergent packets (like Tide Pods) have agreed to a voluntary standard for the packaging of these packets.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, in the United States, 7,184 children (age 5 and younger) were exposed to single-load laundry packets in the first seven months of 2015 (http://www.aapcc.org/alerts/laundry-detergent-packets/).
The WSJ article described the changes that the manufacturers will make (including tougher packaging and opaque containers).
It also quoted Nancy Cowles, the executive director of Kids in Danger, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting children by improving children’s product safety (http://www.kidsindanger.org/about-us/).
She raised an interesting question about risk monitoring: "We are talking absolute numbers-that's what we want to see a drop in. What's important is how many children are being injured, and not the rate of injuries relative to how much companies are selling."
What is the right measure of risk in this case: the number of children injured by laundry detergent packets, the number of injured children per household that uses laundry detergent packets, or the number of injured children per million laundry detergent packets sold?
In other areas, risks are measured per unit of activity: for instance, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) 2013 Annual Safety Review reported both the number of fatal accidents per year and the rate per 10 million flights. Both numbers have been decreasing since 1994, but the rate varies dramatically around the world.
For the article, see http://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-other-laundry-pod-makers-agree-to-new-safety-standard-1441397456?mod=rss_Business
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