Welcome to the May edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot.

In late April, the CPSC voted 3-2 to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) “to address the risk of blade-contact injuries on table saws.” Democratic Commissioner Elliot Kaye issued a statement indicating that the NPR “was long overdue.” He pointed to the CPSC staff ’s analysis, which showed that an estimated 33,400 table-saw-related emergency room injuries occurred in 2015, resulting in 4,700 amputations. Ninety-two percent of table-saw-related injuries were from contact with the spinning blade. Commissioner Kaye opined that the current voluntary standards were inadequate, citing the staff ’s analysis showing that table saw injuries have had “no discernible change in the number of injuries or the level of risk associated with table saw injuries from 2004 to 2015,” despite the introduction of different safety devices. His “principal criticism” for those who oppose the proposed rule is that their alternative of deferring to “the market” is not “an injury prevention strategy.” The proposed rule provides for a performance requirement based on the maximum depth of the laceration made to a surrogate finger moving at 1 m/s into a spinning table saw. The proposed rule does not restrict the method for stopping the blade or require a particular test method to show compliance.