Regulation of the Day: Saving the Children from Durable Products

The eleventh in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Consumer Product Safety Commission ($63.25 million 2008 budget, 401 employees).

CPSC’s latest rule latest proposal would require:

each manufacturer of a durable infant or toddler product to: Provide with each product a postagepaid consumer registration form; keep records of consumers who register such products with the manufacturer; and permanently place the manufacturer name and contact information, model name and number, and the date of manufacture on each such product.

Quickly, ask yourself: how much safer will this make our children? How much more expensive will the affected goods be? How many people actually bother to send in those registration cards, anyway? CPSC isn’t saying.

The proposed rule is open to comment until September 14. You can weigh in at regulations.gov if you like.

Details on pages 30,983-30,990 of the 2009 Federal Register.