Want to Avoid Dangerous Consumer Products? Here’s How to Get Information On Recalls

Posted On July 22, 2016 In Personal Injury

Several incidences of dangerous consumer products causing deaths or injuries to unsuspecting people can make a good case for staying informed on product recalls.

Last week, IKEA issued a recall for its MALM model of dressers due to several children being killed by tip-over accidents. Tip-over accidents occur when children climb the dressers or pull out the drawers, causing an uneven distribution of weight. Dozens of children have been injured or killed by tip-over accidents since 1989. IKEA’s most recent recall involves 39 million dressers, many of which were sold here in the United States.

However, IKEA’s dressers are not the only dangerous consumer product to recently grab headlines. Remember how hoverboards were all the rage during the 2015 holiday season? Many consumers found these poorly designed Segway-looking toys could explode with no warning due to faulty batteries. A family in Louisiana even lost their home after one exploded and caught fire. The CPSC asked manufacturers of hoverboards to issue recalls after numerous reports of explosions.

We have written blogs on defective or unsafe car seats that pose serious dangers to children during accidents. In other words, there are many products that are recalled every year. In some cases, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recalls several products per day!

Fortunately, there are ways you can receive recent information on product recalls to protect yourself and your family. Receiving information on recalls can be done online or with your smartphone.

Online Resources for Information on Product Recalls

The CPSC was created by Congress in 1972 to protect the public from products capable of causing death or injuries to consumers. To carry out its goals, the CPSC conducts research on dangerous products, obtains recalls for dangerous products and educates consumers on product safety. For the purposes of our blog today, we are going to focus on the latter.

The CPSC operates a website with detailed information on recalls. If you are visiting this website, you can search for products by name or manufacturer. By typing IKEA into the website’s search bar, you can find a listing of every product the company has ever recalled. Let’s use IKEA’s MALM dressers as an example. After clicking IKEA’s MALM dressers in the search results, detailed information on the current recall is provided at the top of the page.

Depending on your tolerance for ads, there are also smartphone apps that provide recall information. Keep in mind, the information may not be as concise or recent as what is offered by the CPSC. At the moment, the CPSC does not have its own app. Information from third parties on product safety should always be taken with skepticism and compared with information provided by government agencies.

The Texas personal injury attorneys at Mike Love & Associates, LLC can will fight to defend people who have been injured by negligent companies.