With Injuries Up, Feds Eye Fireworks Laws

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN

WASHINGTON – On the eve of the nation’s noisiest holiday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission responded to growing fireworks injuries by quietly reopening the question of how it should police explosives for backyard entertainment.

Without a public meeting, the three commissioners voted unanimously by ballot late Friday to begin a study of whether to tighten their regulation of fireworks, commission spokesman Scott Wolfson announced Monday. Their notice seeking public comment will appear soon in the Federal Register.

The notice cited a disturbing increase in injuries and a decrease in compliance with safety regulations as reasons for the first major review of commission fireworks regulations since 1976.

"It’s worth pursing an effort to see how we can once again drive down injuries," Wolfson said.

The commission’s only Democrat, Thomas H. Moore, criticized the panel for acting by private ballot. "The commission’s deliberations are supposed to be done in public," Moore said. "We do not serve the public well when we take the first step in a possible rule-making in this manner."

The commission’s just-released study of fireworks injuries in 2005 estimated 10,800 people required emergency room treatment. That figure has risen steadily since an estimated 8,000 required treatment in 2002.

The figures show a small but steady rise in firework injuries compared with the nation’s growing population: from 2.6 injuries per 100,000 people in 1996 to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2005 – a decade in which the use of fireworks soared.

A special commission study estimated that 60 percent of last year’s injuries occurred within two weeks of the July Fourth holiday, when most of the nation’s backyard fireworks are exploded. Children accounted for a substantial share of the victims: 45 percent of the victims were under 15 and more than half were under 20.

At the same time, the commission’s sampling of imported fireworks found a sharp drop last year in compliance with its safety regulations. From 2002 through 2004, 71 percent to 73 percent of imported fireworks complied with federal regulations, but in 2005 that figure plunged to 59 percent.

Most fireworks are imported, mostly from China, which supplied $164.2 million of the total $172.5 million worth imported in 2004.

The panel did not promise to issue new rules but said it would consider requiring manufacturers to test their products and certify they comply with safety requirements; adding new requirements that fireworks must meet; continuing a largely voluntary safety program; or banning some devices case-by-case.

The commission’s mandatory regulations are far less extensive than voluntary ones issued by the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory. The lab, founded in 1989 by the fireworks industry, is governed by a board representing companies that manufacture or import fireworks.

For instance, the AFSL sets maximum powder limits to regulate the power of explosives intended for consumers. The federal commission has no such limits.

AFSL executive director John Rogers said the lab has added standards as dozens of new products have been introduced since 1976, but the commission’s rules have changed little since then.

Without predicting a response to a notice his group hasn’t seen, Rogers said it has long thought the commission should adopt AFSL’s voluntary standards as mandatory. "Our standards are far more comprehensive and far-reaching than CPSC’s and by adhering to ours, fireworks would be safer and have less potential for injury."

The commission said manufacturers certified as complying with AFSL standards fared much better in its survey of imports. Some 83 percent of those fireworks were in compliance with federal rules, compared with 59 percent of all imported fireworks sampled last year.

Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, an industry trade group, said, "We do see a need to extend compliance more broadly in China."

The commission and AFSL have made fireworks substantially safer since 1976, while usage soared from 29 million pounds in 1976 to 118 million pounds in 1996 and 281.5 million pounds last year, Heckman said. The rate of injury has plummeted from 38.3 injuries per 100,000 pounds of fireworks in 1976, to 6.1 in 1996 and to 3.6 in 2005.

"The product coming into the United States now for backyard use is the highest quality and safest it’s ever been," Heckman said.

The largest safety problem is product misuse rather than product failures, Heckman said. "It’s teenagers having bottle rocket wars, parents giving sparklers to 2-year-olds and people having too much to drink and putting firecrackers up their nose."

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On the Net:

Consumer Product Safety Commission: http://www.cpsc.gov

American Pyrotechnics Association: http://www.americanpyro.com/