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Product Safety

Practical design and development guidance for product safety engineering.

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CPSC Gets Aggressive About Failure to Report

Since early 2021, the failure to report or late reporting to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has resulted in significant civil penalty settlements. Manufacturers need to understand their legal responsibilities when analyzing post-sale incidents, injuries, and lawsuits so that they can argue that they met their statutory reporting responsibilities.

Product Liability Law and Its Effect on Product Safety

Manufacturers should understand product liability law and consider it pre-sale when they design and manufacture their products and after sale when they deal with potential product safety problems reported to them by consumers. Doing so will result in safer products and, if there is a lawsuit, a better defense.

Preparing For and Implementing Product Recalls in 2022

Recalls are a major contributor to product liability incidents and lawsuits, interactions with government safety agencies, disputes with suppliers and product sellers, and negative publicity with the buying public. New guides have recently been issued that can help a manufacturer and product seller to better understand how to prepare for and implement an effective recall.

High-Integrity Components in Electrical Equipment, Part 1

While the selection of components in electrical equipment plays a crucial role, a sound understanding of the characteristics of safety-critical and high-integrity components can provide valuable information about the ways to advance and achieve the safety goals.

Contact Burn Injuries, Part II

This is the second of a two-part series that discusses a numerical methodology that relies on the concept of cumulative equivalent exposure to evaluate contact burn injury thresholds.

Navigating the “Safety Hierarchy”

The safety hierarchy is a flexible concept that can be helpful in deciding on a final product design. But it can also be a trap for the unwary design engineer. This article will discuss the safety hierarchy concept, how do you comply with its requirements, and what are the problems associated with it?

Electrical Fire Patterns in Vegetation

The formation of branching patterns is commonly associated with electrical discharges. Lightning and electrostatic discharges from a Van de Graaff generator are transient luminous branching patterns, and sometimes the passing of an electrical current leaves residual physical patterns. Examples of how such patterns are formed are presented.
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