Product safety commission to use crowd sourcing

Deaths caused by some childhood products and toys prompted Congress to call for the website. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

Federal regulators proposed on Monday creating a website that will make product safety information almost immediately available, searchable and downloadable so consumers will become aware of possible hazards more quickly.

Data the Consumer Product Safety Commission currently collects about dangerous items is accessible only through a Freedom of Information Act request or the studies the commission releases after conferring -- typically for long periods of time -- with a product's manufacturer.

With the new website, scheduled to be complete by March 2011, the commission will post product safety information within 10 business days after it informs the manufacturer of an incident in which the item caused harm, according to a proposed rule in the May 24 Federal Register .

"We recognize the power of crowd sourcing," regulators stated in the rule, referring to the practice of using the online community to gather research. "We are designing database reporting options into the system that will enable public users to extract data sets of published incident report information."

Consumer product safety reforms enacted in 2008 required the commission to establish a publicly available, searchable database on product risks. Monday's proposal was issued as a result of those reforms. A spate of deaths and injuries within the past few years caused by tainted toys made in China and hazardous cribs prompted the legislation. Earlier this month, the commission recalled toy dart guns manufactured in China after two children died when the darts became lodged in their throats.

"The system will make the data available in multiple common formats for download so researchers and partner organizations can work with us to identify hazards and analyze trends," the notice stated. In addition, the commission plans to collaborate with institutions to develop algorithms for detecting early warnings and identifying patterns among the products.

The proposed website would provide advanced search capabilities, such as "fuzzy matching," which can carry out queries that are misspelled or similar to other results -- and sorting by product category, manufacturer or model, as well as by the date/type/location/severity of the product and hazard.