Develop enhanced consumer product safety metrics - enhanced quantitative measures of the safety of consumer products

This document is a Request for Information (RFI) only. The Government desires to ascertain the existence of, interest in, and capability to develop enhanced consumer product safety metrics, i.e., enhanced quantitative measures of the safety of consumer products. The government is seeking information from the scientific community, health and safety professionals, industry representatives, academic institutions, voluntary standards associations and the general public. The government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this RFI or to otherwise pay for the information received. Based on the results of this RFI, if funding is available and a study is deemed reasonable, the government may submit a follow-on announcement in FedBizOpps requesting formal proposals. The government may make one or more awards as a contract or other suitable agreement. Parties responding to this notice must be registered in Central Contractor Registration (CCR). For more information see www.ccr.gov. If responding to this RFI, please clearly label all proprietary information and any other limitations on disclosure. Do not prepare or submit proposals in response to this RFI. The purpose of this RFI is to receive input from technical experts and other parties on the project technical requirements. Technical questions and suggestions and contracting questions should be addressed to the appropriate point of contact listed below. Specific questions to be addressed in response to this RFI are listed at the end of this document. Responses to this RFI are due by May 30, 2008. Send responses to the Division of Procurement Services, U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 4330 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814, Att: Kimberly Miles. Address technical questions to Michael Greene, 301-504-7335, mgreene@cpsc.gov. Contracting questions to Kimberly Miles, 301-504-7018, kmiles@cpsc.gov. INTRODUCTION: The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) staff is seeking information from the scientific community, health and safety professionals, academia, consumer groups, industry representatives, voluntary standards associations and the general public about approaches for enhancing quantitative measures of the safety of consumer products. Enhancements should be both meaningful and practical. The agency is also seeking information about how to implement a cost-effective system to collect and analyze data to be able to produce these enhanced measures. BACKGROUND: CPSC is an independent regulatory agency, established in 1973, with jurisdiction over thousands of products used by consumers in and around homes. The agency administers five laws as follows: - Consumer Product Safety Act - Federal Hazardous Substances Act - Flammable Fabrics Act - Poison Prevention Packaging Act and the - Refrigerator Safety Act. Under these laws, the agency recalls unsafe products, establishes mandatory standards for certain products, participates in the voluntary standards development process for certain products, conducts information and education campaigns about product safety, and tests consumer products for compliance with laws and standards. The agency bases its actions to reduce the risks from hazardous consumer products on information developed from its extensive data collection systems that are used to assess the causes, frequency, and severity of consumer product-related injuries. In the late 1980s CPSC staff developed a Comprehensive Plan to determine compliance rates for a variety of regulated products (i.e., consumer products directly subject to the law). The Comprehensive Plan was designed to examine the compliance of these products on a periodic basis, and then identify problem areas so as to focus agency resources on these areas. The Plan involved prioritizing a number of product categories and then scheduling studies in the categories considered to be of high priority. The model for prioritization contained factors involving the hazard, the specific industry, and previous compliance history in the product category. A number of studies were then conducted. Common factors in these studies included the following: - Selection of a product or class of products for study - The development of a frame for sampling retail stores, manufacturers, wholesalers, or importers (collectively: establishments), as required by a particular study - Selection of a sample of establishments from the frame - Visits to establishments and testing of study consumer products on-site or at the CPSC Engineering Laboratory - Estimation of the proportion of complying and non-complying products sold in the U.S. for the product under study. Some examples of studies carried out under the Comprehensive Plan, with the associated mandatory standard in parenthesis were as follows: - A 1994 survey on adult sleepwear to determine compliance with regulations on the flammability of clothing textiles (16 CFR 1610). - A 1994 study to evaluate compliance with the bicycle standard (16 CFR 1512). For the most part, these studies were very labor intensive, requiring travel by agency field staff to different parts of the country and occasionally resulting in expensive product testing. These studies did not continue after the mid 1990s because it was believed that agency resources would be more appropriately targeted on emerging hazardous products, or products that were suspected of being defective or non-compliant with voluntary or mandatory standards. In addition, it appeared from the Comprehensive Plan studies, injury surveillance, and other studies that overall compliance with agency regulations was high. However, one problem with targeting resources toward certain potentially hazards products is that if successfully targeted, compliance rates will be low and unrepresentative of the entire product population in that product category. Thus it is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate safety metrics for all products within a particular category if the sample is selected to target the most hazardous or most non-compliant products in that category. REQUEST: CPSC staff would like to build on the knowledge gained from previous studies, information in various existing surveillance systems and other knowledge-based systems to develop cost effective, enhanced metrics of consumer product safety. As well as an overall metric or metrics of product safety, agency staff would like metrics associated with vulnerable subpopulations, such as children under 6 and adults over 65. Metrics could also be classified by types of activities, such as sports and recreation, cooking, or day care; or to specific product groups, such as home heating equipment, children's jewelry (lead hazard), or bicycles. These are presented as examples and should not be understood to represent the only activities or products of interest. Agency staff is particularly interested in metrics associated with two agency strategic goals. These are as follows: - Fire Hazards: Reduce the rate of death from fire-related causes by 20 percent from 1998 to 2013. - Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Hazard: Reduce the rate of death from CO poisoning by 20 percent from the 1999-2000 average by the year 2013. Also, a major agency focus is on reducing injuries and deaths associated with hazards to children from consumer products, especially imported products. For more details on agency activities and goals, see the 2008 Performance Budget (Operating Plan), available from the agency on request or at http://www.cpsc.gov/. GENERAL QUESTIONS: To summarize, agency staff is looking for a general approach that would result in the following: 1. A planned approach involving both agency staff and stakeholders that would lead to enhanced and credible metrics of consumer product-related safety. 2. Investigation of various data sources to augment current surveillance system data that would be used in such a system to estimate the measures. 3. How such data would be analyzed to produce the required metrics. 4. Approximate costs for development and operation of a system to provide these metrics. The agency is also interested in the capability of respondents to develop and operate such a system. In addressing the general questions above the respondent should provide some detailed information about the following: 1. The process of identifying stakeholders. 2. Approaches to involve stakeholders at the beginning and during the process. 3. Technical approaches leading to the development of a credible, cost-efficient and useful measure(s) of product safety. 4. Some product safety measures that might be used in such a study along with the appropriate denominators reflecting exposure. 5. Experiences of other regulatory agencies and experiences of the respondent with this type of project. 6. The use and/or adaptation of CPSC agency data sources and available non-agency data, e.g., health surveys, insurance data, etc. in these metrics. 7. Incorporation of measurements of product compliance from targeted surveys of products likely to be hazardous and product compliance measurements from routine surveillance, such as surveillance of imported products at the ports. 8. Special approaches for enhanced metrics of product safety for chronic hazards such as lead ingestion that for the most part are not captured in hospital emergency department surveillance system data. 9. Study designs including the general outline for studies with details such as how often studies would be undertaken and where. Also plans to incorporate the ability to track these product safety metrics over time. 10. Rough estimates of the time, cost, and other resources to create a plan for and implement a working system for measuring product safety. HOW TO RESPOND: Responses should be in the form of reports or letters discussing how such a project would be conducted. Previous studies conducted by the respondent or studies of which the respondent is aware that are relevant to this RFI should be summarized. Responses to this Request for Information (RFI) are to be submitted directly to the CPSC Division of Procurement Services address indicated above, no later than July 31, 2008. Responses may be submitted by e-mail, fax (301-504-0628), or US Mail.