Window blinds recalled after death

Window shades, blinds recalled amid safety review

Updated: Monday, 15 Nov 2010, 7:23 AM EST
Published : Monday, 15 Nov 2010, 7:23 AM EST

Here is yet further proof of the dangers lurking in our homes and what is happening in USA.                       

WASHINGTON (AP) - The death of a toddler who strangled in a window shade cord spurred a huge recall Wednesday, even as the industry crafts a better standard to make window coverings in American homes safer for children.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says Hanover Direct Inc., of Weehawken, N.J., has agreed to recall about 495,000 roman shades and some 28,500 blinds. Hanover is the parent company for Domestications, The Company Store, and Company Kids.

CPSC says the 22-month-old boy in Cedar Falls, Iowa, became trapped in the pull cord of a roman shade in May. He was found hanging by his neck and was rescued by his father, but died later at a hospital.

The commission estimates that one child dies every month after strangling on the cords of blinds or roman shades.

Consumer safety groups have complained that the government and industry have been slow over the last two decades to cut child deaths from blinds. More recently, however, CPSC has stepped up its efforts to get safer window coverings on the market.

At a meeting of industry officials and consumer advocates at CPSC headquarters in Bethesda, Md., this week, the head of the commission urged manufacturers to move swiftly to approve new safety rules.

"Chart a new course today," said Chairman Inez Tenenbaum, "a course that promises to eliminate, not just mitigate, the risk of harm to children."

While there have been millions of blinds and shades recalled in the past several years, safety advocates say fatality rates haven't improved much and the process for moving safer designs to the market has been sluggish.

The problem is the cord on the blinds and shades that rolls them up and down. Young children can get tangled and trapped in the cords, leading to injuries and deaths. Since 1990, CPSC estimates that nearly 250 infants and young children have died from accidentally strangling on window cords.

Ralph Vasami, executive director of the Window Covering Manufacturers Association, says blinds and shades can be used by most people with no problem at all. "But there is a hidden risk to children," he said in an interview.

Vasami says manufacturers are pressing ahead to revise the current voluntary safety rules on the books, standards developed by industry. He expects to have new rules ready for a vote by next October.

Current standards for roman shades, Vasami says, call for them to be cordless; have cords that are inaccessible to children; or if the cord is in reach of a child, then it cannot be able to form a hazardous loop that could trap a child's head. That standard would likely serve as a model and be expanded to cover blinds in the new writing of standards under way.

Wednesday's recall involving Hanover is an expansion of a previous recall from October 2009 of about 90,000 roman shades. Thousands more roman shades as well as roller and roll-up blinds are now being called back. The products were sold through the company nationwide from January 1996 through October 2009.

So what is happening in UK?

 

Answer.

 

WindowBlindSafe is launched in January 2011 offering the first Child-Resistant Safety Device to meet all the requirements of the new Universal Window Blind Safety Guideline. To learn more, go to www.windowblindsafe.com

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Governments across the World fail to take a action.

When the UK government faced an e-petition in early 2009 calling for a ban on all looped cords on window blinds, it was unmoved.

 

Even though blinds pose a clear and present danger to young children, an official spokesman said: “We understand that one or two young children die each year in the UK from blind cord strangulation. These are tragic accidents and our sympathies go to the families who have lost their children, however the Government does not believe a case has been made for the measure requested in the e-petition.

 

“The major concern is not the banning of the cords through regulation, but the millions of blinds with looped cords that are already in consumer’s homes.” 

 

Those campaigning for a ban on all blinds with cords are, understandably, looking to the future, but with an estimated 250million window blinds already in UK homes and public buildings, a comrehensive ban will take years, perhaps decades, to have any effect. In the meantime, tragedy will continue to blight the lives of many parents.

 

We believe that the introduction of a new safety guideline for parents, which we have developed, is a solution. The guideline sets out a simple wrap-a-round test to assess all safety devices on the market. Basically, if you can wrap your hand round one of the cords hanging from a window bind, even if it isn’t a looped cord, then it could strangle a child.

 

In our test, devices such as cleats, tassels and tensioners have been found to be almost useless. The only device currently on the market to pass the test is WindowBlindSafe. It is the only simple and secure solution with a patented tamper-proof system of stowing and locking blind cords and chains.

 

A ban on cords might come tomorrow. WindowBlindSafe is the solution for today.

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Window-Covering Makers Should Speed Rules, CPSC Says

Window-covering manufacturers should write tougher rules governing product designs as strangling deaths mount among small children, the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

“A young child is likely to die this month in a window- cord incident,” Inez Tenenbaum said today at an industry meeting in Bethesda, Maryland. “A young child is likely to die every month that this standard is being worked on. No matter what the situation or circumstance is, these tragedies are preventable.”

Window-blind manufacturers such as Hunter Douglas NV and retailers like J.C. Penney Co. are meeting at the agency’s Washington headquarters to map out a plan for bolstering voluntary safety rules through the American National Standards Institute, or ANSI. The group unveiled stricter requirements in September for Roman shades, which are drawn up from the bottom into a series of folds.

The CPSC orchestrated one of the largest recalls in the agency’s history last December to fix more than 50 million Roman and roll-up blinds, covering all such products sold at retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Pottery Barn outlets owned by Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Restoration Hardware Inc.

U.S. regulators received reports of five deaths and 16 near-strangulations in Roman shades since 2006 and three deaths involving roll-up blinds since 2001, the CPSC said in December.

Voluntary Industry Standard

A voluntary industry standard adopted by the institute in September falls short of what’s needed, according to consumer groups involved in the rule-writing process, including Parents for Window-Blind Safety and Consumers Union. That effort focused on adding a warning label to Roman shades and not cords in all types of products.

“If they choose to eliminate all the known hazards, this will be the goal we’ve been pressing for the last eight years,” said Linda Kaiser, founder of Chicago-based Parents for Window- Blind Safety, whose daughter, Cheyenne Rose, died in a window- blind cord accident in 2002.

Today’s meeting kicked off an effort to write tougher rules by next October, Ralph Vasami, executive director of the New York-based Window Covering Manufacturers Association, said in an interview. The effort will apply to all kinds of window coverings and will result in tests for preventing known hazards such as cords accessible by young children, he said.

‘Looking for Solutions’

“We were on a schedule driven by the CPSC to get enhancements out as quickly as possible,” Vasami said. “We’re looking for solutions.”

The industry and the CPSC have been working on the same safety problems since the 1980s, said Carol Pollack-Nelson, an independent product-safety consultant from Rockville, Maryland, who served on the ANSI window-covering committee. Companies haven’t felt the pressure to act because consumers are used to cords and don’t consider them dangerous, she said.

“The challenge of this product is it’s been around for a long time,” Pollack-Nelson said. “It’s like being afraid of your walls and your floors.”

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