"INDUSTRY-FRIENDLY OFFICIALS OVERSEE WORKPLACES, FOOD SUPPLIERS, ENVIRONMENT, CONSUMER GOODS"

Major investigative article -- NYT: Safety Agency Faces Scrutiny Amid Changes
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: September 2, 2007


Scant Resources for Safety Tests
Robert L. Hundemer, right, the sole full-time tester for toys on the market in the United States, conducts an impact test in a one-room lab while Andrew G. Stadnik, the lab director, watches. Former employees of the Consumer Product Safety Commission say products from China frequently violate standards.

....Under the Bush administration, which promised to ease what it viewed as costly rules that placed unnecessary burdens on businesses, industry-friendly officials have been installed at agencies that oversee the nation’s workplaces, food suppliers, environment and consumer goods.

Top officials at the Consumer Product Safety Commission say they have enhanced protections for the American public in recent years. But they have also blocked enforcement actions, weakened industry oversight rules and promoted voluntary compliance over safety mandates, according to interviews with current and former senior agency officials and consumer groups and a review of commission documents.

At a time when imports from China and other Asian countries surged, creating an ever greater oversight challenge, the Bush-appointed commissioners voiced few objections as the already tiny agency — now just 420 workers — was pared almost to the bone.

At the nation’s ports, the handful of agency inspectors are hard pressed to find dangerous cargo before it enters the country; instead, they rely on other federal agents, who mostly act as trademark enforcers, looking for counterfeit Nike sneakers or Duracell batteries. At the agency’s cramped laboratory, a lone employee is charged with testing suspected defective toys from across the nation. At the nearby headquarters, safety initiatives have been stalled or dropped after dozens of jobs were eliminated in budget cutbacks.

Other workers quit in frustration. The head of the poison prevention unit, for example, resigned when efforts to require inexpensive child-resistant caps on hair care products that had burned toddlers were delayed so industry costs could be weighed against the potential benefit to children.

“Buyer beware — that is all I have to say,” Suzanne Barone, the poison prevention expert, who left in 2005, said....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/business/02consumer.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all