Speaking today on `History and Role of the US Consumer Product Safety Council (CPSC)', Lawrence Hershman, senior Compliance Officer, said the council has successfully recalled more than 67.5 lakh defective products from the market in 1997 alone.

``Helping to keep families - especially children - safe in their homes, schools and recreation areas is the job of CPSC,'' he said. This is done by reducing unreasonable risks of death and injury associated with over 15,000 types of consumer products which this federal agency oversees, he added.

The US, said Hershman, has to deal with 21,400 consumer products relateddeaths per year apart from over 29 million injuries and spend over 200 billion dollars in societal cost. To deal with this, CPSC was set up in 1973 with four commissioners and a staff of 480, with a $ 45 million budget. It carried out 700 on-site in-depth investigations besides case-by-case studies of individual complaints.

CPSC relies on the information from individuals, hospitals and the media. It has also started the use of video news releases on TV channels for product recalls. Hershman said that 99 per cent of the recalls were voluntary through negotiations with the manufacturing companies.

However, he agrees that banning a product was not the only answer. '' N G Wagle, chairman of Consumer Guidance Society of India, who attended the meet, said that there is no recall system in India and opined that such a system would prove beneficiary to a lot of consumers. In fact, India lacks any consumer product safety agency and a demand for one might be made in the future, he stated.