A large portion of our lives revolves around consumer products. According to the United States' Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) and the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the term 'consumer product' means:
. . . ..any article, or component part thereof, produced or distributed (i) for sale to a consumer for use in or around a permanent or temporary household or residence, a school, in recreation, or otherwise, or (ii) for the personal use, consumption or enjoyment of a consumer in or around a permanent or temporary household or residence, a school, in recreation, or otherwise… (US Congress 1972)
In layman's terms, a consumer product is something that you normally expect to be obtained by an individual for household, recreational or sports purposes. However, as you will see in the next reading, there are exceptions. For this reason, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) does not have jurisdiction over all consumer products.
If we view products from this perspective, the categorization approach is very different from those mentioned earlier in this unit.
Items that do not fall under the scope of commercial products in CPSA are food, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, tobacco products, firearms and ammunition, motor vehicles, pesticides, aircraft, boats, and fixed-site amusement rides. Of course there are regulations for these items in the United States, but they are dealt with by other federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Activity 5 shows you how consumer products are categorized by the CPSC.
In fact, the CPSC regulates over 15,000 types of consumer products! It would be impossible to study each category. Nevertheless, we can focus on the groups which are of prime concern nowadays and those which we, as consumers, use frequently.
As you can see, there are numerous approaches to categorizing products, and numerous categories for each approach.
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