alt Hacker NewsI'd be curious to see a breakdown between the "toxic chemicals" and "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk. The other day I was watching the TV above the Walmart customer service desk that displays product recalls, and multiple recalled products were a motorized bassinet, but the wireless remote control has a battery compartment that could be opened and then the battery swallowed. To a layman or (I assume) Chinese inventor, that seems overly burdensome as I am certain that same household would have other wireless remotes.
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> "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk.
Are you US-american? (Walmart is a good hint that you are.) There's some widespread misconceptions/prejudice there, e.g. the Kinder egg thing. The EU has no problem with selling those.
Batteries are more than a choking hazard; they can cause severe internal chemical burns, gut perforation and so on initiated by electrolysis.
People forget many of US's regulations were written in blood because the US already had it's industrialization period. They left behind signposts that people could use to sue.
The US seems burdensome because some US Entrepreneur already tried not caring and something happened. A good comparison is China cars which don't pass US standards for import. It's also a reason US Makes can't iterate as quickly as they aren't allowed to do the same things that China Makes can to iterate fast.
Whether or not it needs to stay that way is really the only question. I think most reasonably intelligent people read things like suffocation warnings and go, "well obviously don't do that." But the regs are written for the people who aren't that bright who will do it anyway.
Not a breakdown, but this comment reminded me of a recent play sand test by Stiftung Warentest:
They tested play sand for asbestos, and four of these positive tested play sands were ordered on Temu. The play sand is for kids!
https://www.test.de/Deko-Spiel-und-Bastelsand-Asbest-Alarm-i...