Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, I'd first like to thank the chairman of the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection subcommittee, Mr. Rush, for his support and help.

I also want to thank Mr. Stearns for his support of the legislation, as well as full committee Chairman Dingell and Ranking Member Barton.

It is clear that our system for recalling dangerous products is simply broken. It is failing American families. The recall system relies on the media to pick up the story and spread the word, but many times the stories are not picked up and the news does not reach the owners of defective products. In fact, some estimate that the recall effectiveness rate for products under jurisdiction of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is a mere 16 percent. Notification targeted to owners of the product is rare, and many parents remain unaware of the dangers.

And that's why I rise in strong support of H.R. 1699, the Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification Act, which I was proud to introduce with my good friend from Michigan, Congressman Upton. This bill will begin to close the significant gaps in the recall system by requiring that durable children's products such as cribs and strollers and high chairs come with a postage-paid postcard that parents or caregivers can mail in to be notified if a product is recalled for safety reasons.

This legislation is a commonsense solution to a very real and pervasive problem. Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death among children. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an estimated 64,700 children under the age of 5 were treated in emergency rooms across the country for injuries associated with nursery products in 2003 at a cost of $2.5 billion, and that figure has almost certainly risen in the last 4 years. And even more tragically, an average of 50 children under the age of 5 die each year in incidents associated with nursery products, and about 16 of these deaths each year are associated with cribs.

And this bill is a tribute to one such child. On May 12, 1998, 16-month-old Danny Keysar was strangled to death at his licensed day care facility when a portable crib collapsed, turning the horizontal side rail into a V-shaped wedge that squeezed his throat and strangled him. Imagine what Danny's parents must have felt when they learned that the crib that killed their son, a Playskool Travel-Lite crib, had been recalled by the government and the manufacturer 5 years earlier.

And, sadly, Danny's parents aren't alone. More than 1.5 million portable cribs like the one that killed Danny were made with a similar design by different manufacturers. The crib that took Danny's life had already killed four children. A 10-month-old New Jersey baby became the sixth child to be strangled to death by the Playskool crib just 3 months after Danny died.

Despite the recall, neither the day care center nor State inspectors who had been to the facility just a week before Danny's death knew that recalled products were being used there. And they are not to blame. It was not the State agency's mandate to inspect for recalled materials; and unless someone who worked in the center happened to catch the recall story on the news, there was virtually no way to know that the cribs they used were death traps. And, by the way, Illinois did change its law.

But in case anyone might think this was an isolated incident, think again. In 2005 children's products were recalled on average two times a week. Just over 2 weeks ago, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the largest recall of full-sized cribs in the agency's history, recalling almost a million of the Nation's most popular cribs because of design flaws that have already killed at least three more children. And a week later, Kolcraft, the company that manufactured the Playskool crib that killed Danny Keysar, recalled 425,000 infant play yards following the death of a 10-month-old child.

Congress needs to act to make sure that these kinds of senseless tragedies don't occur again. When Danny's parents, Linda Ginzel and Boaz Keysar, learned that the crib that had killed their son had been recalled in 1993, they turned their grief into action and founded Kids in Danger, a Chicago-based nonprofit that is dedicated to protecting children by improving children's product safety. It is because of their dedication that we are here today, and I am honored to represent them here today and thank them for their work. I hope with the passage of this legislation no more parents will have to endure what they did.

I believe that H.R. 1699, which allows people to send in a card or e-mail to make sure that the manufacturer will let them know, just as is done with car seats in the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration, a provision that has been so successful that there has been a tenfold increase in recalls and recall repair rates have gone up by 56 percent, that at a cost of a handful of pennies per card, this legislation will save lives of children.

I would appreciate support.

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