Audio Clip - Mattress Press Conference Soundbites
Press Release # 06-091
Transcript
CPSC Chairman Hal Stratton sound bites from the Press Conference after the Commission Meeting on the Final Rule and Preamble for the Flammability (Open Flame) of Mattress Sets held on February 16, 2006.
We've passed a new open flame regulation and the whole idea behind the regulation is to make sure that if a mattress catches on fire that the fire burns slowly enough that people have enough time to get out of the house and get away.
When you can save 270 lives in a very cost-effective way, bring that number down, hopefully move it toward zero, that's what we'd like to do.
This is not a preemption of lawsuits or liability or anything like that.
We always want to preserve a system where somebody who is negligently or intentionally harmed by somebody else to have a cause of action. I very much believe in that.
Under Federal law, major regulations are defined as those regulations which have an impact of one hundred million dollars or more per year in the market. The CPSC had never addressed a regulation of that economic impact, so today was the first day that we had ever promulgated a regulation that is a major regulation.
End.