Products Safety Category Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog Published by Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyer

Warning to Georgia Parent: Baby Seat Recalled

October 25, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

Warning to all Georgia parents: another child seat has been recalled. This time it is the Bumbo baby seat, made by Bumbo International, a Texas company. bumbo%20seat.jpg

You can find out more at bumbosafety.com, but after looking at that site, it seems the corporation, like many in its shoes, is attempting to blame the parents for the lack of safety of the very product it manufactured. So many corporations, when they are caught red-handed manufacturing a dangerous product, point a finger at their own customers, rather than accepting responsibility for placing a defective, dangerous product on the market. This is the face of the fact that the Consumer Product Safety Commission says it has received 28 reports of children falling out of the seats, which prompted the recall.

Georgia parents can retrieve newly written instructions for use of the seat at bumbosafety.com. When you read them, it will probably make you mad that the corporation is blaming you, the parent. If you have such a seat at home, you might reconsider using it any further based upon the CPSC recall. Perhaps a better source for learning more about this product recall and others, is cpsc.gove, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s own website. I think it is a good idea to check that site periodically for safety information on all sorts of products.

Warning for Georgians: Do Not Use Stand ‘n Seal Sold at Home Depot in Georgia

October 8, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

I want to issue a warning to Do-It-Yourselfers out there, who enjoy a Saturday trip to Home Depot here in Atlanta, Georgia to find the materials they need to fix up something at the their houses and take pride in having done the job themselves. Do not purchase or use Stand ‘n Seal, a sealant used to seal grout around tile. It has been proven to cause lung damage with just one use. At least 80 serious injuries, including 2 fatalities, have been linked to this dangerous product.

A tiny Georgia company, Innovative Chemical Technologies, made a chemical called Flexipel S-22WS, a dangerous ingredient in the sealant. There is evidence of a cover-up in that the manufacturer of Stand ‘n Seal knew well in advance of marketing and selling the spray that the chemical in it could cause lung damage to innocent users. In another example of Corporate America putting profits over people, after becoming aware of numerous complaints about the product, Richard F. Tripodi, the manufacturer’s chief executive, asked a staff member fielding calls at a 24-hour emergency number not to tell customers reporting illnesses that others had called with similar complaints, documents show. Truly reprehensible conduct.

Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission finally issued an official recall of the hazardous product, it remained on Home Depot shelves available for purchase by Home Depot customers well after the recall and well after the deadly side effect was known. It was not until March 2007, 18 months after the original recall, that Home Depot and Roanoke acknowledged the apparent source of the continuing problem.

Georgia Children Are Dying From Defective SUV’s That Lack Back-up Cameras

August 1, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

The loss of a child saddens me and it is especially tough when the child’s death was preventable. In the last two weeks, children in two separate incidents were killed when they were run over by one of their parents who was driving an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle). The first incident, in Savannah, Georgia, involved a mother who ran over her twenty month old daughter as she backed up in her Isuzu Ascension, an SUV. To read more of that horrible story, click here.http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2007/07/20/toddlerkilled.html Then I see today that in Ohio, a father backed over his own child yesterday while heading out to church. This father was driving a Chevrolet Suburban. For more on this tragedy, click here. http://www.wlwt.com/news/13778230/detail.html

I am willing to bet that neither the Chevrolet Suburban nor the Isuzu Ascension had a back-up camera in them, which easily allows an SUV driver to see what is behind the car before backing up. In fact, this type of camera automatically comes on anytime the vehicle is in reverse. Also, they are cheap, costing only approximately $150.00. These back-up cameras are crucial in SUVs, in which the driver is sitting so high off the ground and the SUV is so long that it is almost impossible to see everything behind the SUV clearly. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in a report to Congress in November, said backover accidents are not a recent phenomenon. But NHTSA disputes perceptions that the number of accidents is increasing as the size of the nation’s vehicle fleet grows — led by SUVs and minivans, which tend to have larger rear blind zones.

A study by Consumer Reports magazine suggests SUVs, pickups and minivans are longer and taller and their blind zones extend as much as 50 feet from the rear bumper. These factors contribute to poor visibility, the report says.

Back-up cameras would have prevented both of these tragic deaths.

Something obviously needs to be done. The statistics are alarming: 1,200 children under 15 who have been killed since 2000 in nontraffic motor-vehicle accidents in the United States. Half of those fatalities were in backovers, almost all of them involving children under 5, according to Kids and Cars, a child-safety advocacy group in Leawood, Kan.http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/64616.html

What is $150.00 if it will save the life of a child? A child’s life is priceless. It is time Congress mandated the inclusion of these inexpensive, but absolutely life-saving, back-up cameras in all new SUVs before another child dies needlessly, and another family is tortured with the guilt of running over their own child. Enough is enough.