Consumer Product Safety Commission begins to consider bans in addition to warning labels

The Washington Post:

Today, warnings are so pervasive that they’ve become a nearly meaningless safety tool in some areas, more useful in protecting manufacturers against legal liability than in guarding consumers from harm, according to David Egilman, a clinical professor at Brown University’s family medicine department who has researched industry’s influence on warnings.

“If everything you pick up has a warning on it, you’re going to instinctively ignore all warnings,” Egilman said. “That’s the real problem.”

It’s the classic “cry wolf” situation, said Richard Thompson, a psychology and biological sciences professor at the University of Southern California. People exposed to the same stimulus without consequences are less likely to pay attention, he said.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post