Consumer Protection

Is our food safe? What about the drugs we take? The cars we drive and the products we buy? Are the banks, credit card companies and lenders dealing fairly with us? In each case, federal agencies are charged with making sure the answer is “yes.” But examples of unsafe products and unfair practices abound in the marketplace.

For years, General Motors hid from regulators evidence that an ignition switch the company used in its Cobalts, Opels, Pontiacs, and Saturns had such a hair trigger that a light brush by the driver’s hand or knee would shut down the engine, disabling air bags and power steering. The resulting loss of control caused at least 13 fatal accidents. GM's ability to avoid detection for so many years says as much about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's weak enforcement record as anything.

Other examples abound. From tainted peanut butter to toxic drywall, to lead-laden imported toys, such instances of unsafe food, drugs, automobiles and products are all too dangerous evidence of a failed system of regulation and enforcement. Often the failure is the result of neglect – a lack of political will to spend the money required to conduct meaningful research and enforcement. Sometimes the cause is ideological: a conviction that safeguards interfere unduly with industry profits. Either way, the result is that industry is spared the costs of being accountable for unsafe production practices, shifting those costs instead to consumers in the form of injuries, illness and worse.

Below, see what CPR Members Scholars and staff have had to say about it in reports, testimony, op-eds and more. Use the search box to narrow the list.

Opening the Industry Playbook: Myths and Truths in the Debate Over BPA Regulation

Opening the Industry Playbook: Myths and Truths in the Debate Over BPA Regulation, CPR White Paper 1107

Type: Reports (May 26, 2011)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity, Rena Steinzor, Matt Shudtz
Twelve Crucial Health, Safety, and Environmental Regulations: Will the Obama Administration Finish in Time?

Twelve Crucial Health, Safety, and Environmental Regulations: Will the Obama Administration Finish in Time?, CPR White Paper 1106

Type: Reports (April 19, 2011)
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Author(s): Amy Sinden, Rena Steinzor, Matt Shudtz, James Goodwin, Yee Huang
Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants

In his 2011 book, Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants, published by Harvard Univesity Press, CPR Member Scholar Carl Cranor offers up a scientifically rigorous legal analysis arguing that just as pharmaceuticals and pesticides cannot be sold without pre-market testing, other chemical products should be subject to the same safety measures. Cranor shows, in terrifying detail, what risks we run, while making clear that it is entirely possible to design a less dangerous commercial world.

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Author(s): Carl Cranor
Corrective Lenses for IRIS: Reforms to Improve EPA's Integrated Risk Information System
Type: Reports (Oct. 25, 2010)
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Wendy Wagner, Matt Shudtz
The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the Public

Reasonable people disagree about the reach of the federal government, but almost everyone believes the government should protect us from such dangers as bacteria-infested food, harmful drugs, toxic pollution, crumbling bridges, and unsafe toys. And yet, the agencies that shoulder these responsibilities are in shambles; if they continue to decline, lives will be lost, money wasted, and natural resources squandered. In their 2010 book, The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the Public: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment, Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro take a hard look at the tangled web of problems that have led to the dire state of the American regulatory structure.

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Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Sidney Shapiro
Plausibility Pleading: Barring the Courthouse Door to Deserving Claimants

Plausibility Pleading: Barring the Courthouse Door to Deserving Claimants, CPR White Paper 1005

Type: Reports (May 11, 2010)
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Author(s): Bill Funk, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, James Goodwin
Editorial Memorandum on NHTSA's role in the Toyota Recalls
Editorial Memorandum on NHTSA's role in the Toyota Recalls, by Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro
Type: Editorial Memos (Feb. 22, 2010)
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CPR Member Scholars letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Toyota safety recall

CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro's letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee re the failure of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to address in a timely fashion engineering failures in certain Toyota models

Type: Letters to Agencies (Feb. 9, 2010)
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Author(s): Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor

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