The Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Trotman took an in-depth look yesterday at the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s notoriously ineffective recall process. In a nine-month period ending in June, the federal product safety agency announced a record-setting 415 product recalls. Yet consumers only learned about 15-30 percent of these recalls.

What can be done to effectively publicize these product hazards? The status quo is a mishmash between fliers sent to retailers, press releases sent to news agencies, and the small-print at the bottom corner of the Washington Post’s business section (which is probably read by about 23 people outside the D.C. metro area).

One solution is better use of the CPSC Web site to publicize these dangers. That’s a start, but it leads to the even more fundamental problem of how to publicize the CPSC Web site.

As Understanding Government will be laying out in a terribly informative report, the best CPSC can do is de-emphasize recalls. The recall process can, and should, be improved. But the real path to consumer safety lies in this process being used less.-MB

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