Articles Tagged with Defective Products

When we go to the grocery store to pick up our weekly meals, we tend to trust that the food that we are purchasing is safe to consume. We put a certain level of trust in the many products that are at the grocery store, especially if they are popular national brand names.

So when we read about a recall related to one of these large brands, it can be extremely disheartening. Recently Nestle announced a voluntary recall of some products that most of us have heard of: Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine and DiGiorno. The company has recalled specific products from each of these brands. Most of the products contain spinach.

The company says that several customers found small pieces of glass in the food, which prompted the recall. The company says they believe the source of the glass is the spinach that is in many of the products. The products are mostly a variety of pizzas, raviolis and lasagnas.

In our last post about car seats and car seat safety, we wanted to discuss the very important topic of car seat recalls. Parents often do a lot of research when it comes to picking a car seat. They learn about the different types of seats and the state’s laws related to those seats. They buy the seat ahead of time and make sure to install it properly. They may even get it checked by a technician to make sure that everything is perfectly installed and ready to go.

Parents can understand how frustrating it can be to go through all these steps just to learn that the car seat you purchased has been recalled. Or even worse, it can be devastating if a recall has not yet been made and your child is one of the first children to be injured by the defective product.

Thankfully manufacturers are required to let car seat owners know about these types of recalls. That is why it is extremely important for parents to register their car seats when they buy them. On top of that, you can also sign up with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to receive email alerts about any recalls that happen.

In our last post of the week concentrating on the topic of recalls, we discuss the very dangerous threat of food contamination. When we think about food recalls we often think about foods that are easily contaminated such as raw meats or products that need to be refrigerated. The scary thing is that just about any food that is distributed nationally or even locally carries a risk for some sort of contamination. While some contaminations may be low-risk, others can have deadly effects. For this reason, the Food and Drug Administration does not mess around, and as soon as they learn about a possible contamination, they do their best to alert the public in an urgent fashion.

Recently, the FDA announced a voluntary recall of raw pistachios from a specific company. The recall was issued by International Foodsource, LLC on four separate products that all contain pistachios. Thankfully no illnesses have been reported due to the contamination as of the second week of February but as we all know, sometimes it takes quite a bit of time for an illness to be linked to a specific food contamination.

The product apparently poses a possible salmonella risk. Laboratory analysis found the presence of salmonella in a five-ounce bag of one of the four products being recalled. While healthy adults may be able to get through salmonella poisoning with just stomach pains and diarrhea, this type of poisoning poses a great threat to children, the elderly and anyone who is frail or has a weak immune system. That covers a very large percentage of our population.

In our last post we started a discussion on recalls. The www.recalls.gov website is a great place to start if you are curious about what recalls are out there. Although the site exists, the big problem is that consumers can’t constantly be hovering on the site waiting for the next dangerous product to pop up on the screen. If you think about it, we buy tons of new products every week, from grocery items to articles of clothing to gasoline. Any product that a consumer can buy has a potential of being dangerous. There’s no way for consumers to constantly know if one of the products they bought over the last decade may eventually harm them.

Recently a huge issue has come up in regards to hoverboards. These boards, which are self-balancing scooters, were really popular over Christmas. They made it under the tree in many homes in New York and across the nation.

Unfortunately, as reported by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, these hoverboards have been linked to as many as 52 fires so far. The boards have caused more than $2 million in property damage. They have even destroyed two homes.

This week we will be taking a deeper look at defective products and how the government issues recalls. We often hear about products being recalled from news reports either online or during a television broadcast. Some of our readers may wonder if there is one place they can go to find out about all possible recalls that could affect them.

There actually is a convenient place to find out what products are considered hazardous, unsafe or defective. The site is called www.recalls.gov. The site came to be as a group effort between six different agencies: the United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, the United States Coast Guard, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The site lists recalls in various categories including cosmetics, environmental products, food, medicine, motor vehicles, boats and consumer products. The site will help you figure out what the most recent recalls are and who to contact regarding the recall.

Although most New York residents would hope that various industries are regulated in order to make sure a bad product does not injure consumers, that is simply not always the case. Take, for example, beauty products. Such products that do not make medical claims or contain drugs are not really regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Nor can the administration force them to reveal results of their testing or make them recall a product. Unfortunately, some products end up slipping through the cracks and injuring many individuals.

Currently, there is a class action lawsuit filed against the company that sells the hair care product called Wen. Some 200 women have joined the lawsuit and there have reportedly been some 17,000 complaints sent to the company regarding their cleansing conditioner and other Wen products.

According to news reports, the product is apparently causing hair loss for many individuals who use it. Some women experience large clumps of hair loss ending up with small bald spots. The company claims there is no scientific proof that their product is causing any problem.

A lot of our readers may have heard about the E.coli outbreak associated with Chipotle. It has reached our state and five others. It is not yet clear which food specifically caused the outbreak, but it does give us an opportunity to discuss food outbreaks in general.

A lot of people are very careful with the type of meat they use and how long they keep it. Why? Meat has been recalled for various reasons throughout the country every year. Last year there were 18 million pounds of meat recalled. That may seem like a lot, but if you go back to 2008, there were 154 million pounds of meat recalled.

The types of meat that are most recalled vary from year to year. During some years, beef, pork and poultry took the top spots. Other meats, such as buffalo, sheep, and “mixed” meats have also been recalled throughout the years.

When it comes to having a child, parents will go to great lengths to keep their child safe. Before bringing an infant into the world, parents will often research various purchases, such as cribs and child safety seats, in order to find the best and safest brand on the market.

It makes sense, then, that a recall for something as important as a child safety seat can be quite alarming to any parent. Recently, Britax announced that it is recalling some 71,000 car seats across the country. The safety seats apparently have an issue with the handle. The carrying handle on these devices can apparently break, which could lead to an infant being dropped in his or her car seat.

The company says they have had one report of a child being injured due to the handle breaking. The child apparently got a bump on the head and suffered a bruise. The first complaint, according to the company, came last May, followed by other complaints.

An old product recall case has sparked a lawsuit brought by nearly 120 women against a pharmaceutical company. The recall happened back in 2011 and involved birth control pills. The pills were apparently packaged out of order, which potentially left women vulnerable to pregnancy. More than half a million blister packs were recalled after one customer noticed the pills were out of order.

Of the women involved in the lawsuit, more than 100 became pregnant and 94 of them carried the child to term. They are suing the company, as well as other companies that were involved in making and distributing the pills under other brand names, seeking damages for medical costs, lost income and for some, the cost of raising a child.

A similar lawsuit was recently rejected class-action status by a U.S. district judge. The judge said he considers each woman’s case unique and that each one should be weighed individually based on its specific and circumstances.

When an accident happens, there is a wide variety of injuries that can occur, from broken bones to scrapes to concussions. One of the more painful injuries that may occur during a car accident or from a defective product is a burn injury.

Burns can be caused by boiling water, explosions, fires, chemicals, sun exposure, and electrical equipment, among other things. This type of injury may happen just about anywhere. An employee may be working with flammable chemicals at an automotive shop and experience a severe burn. A homemaker may get burned while cooking. No matter the scenario, these burns can be extremely painful and can cause long-term or even permanent damage.

In general, there are three degrees of burns. First-degree burns are the least severe. The symptoms usually include redness at the burn area and non-blistering skin. The skin may peel as it heals and may swell a bit. A second-degree burn is the type that causes blistering and possible thickening of the skin where the injury occurred. Finally, you can also get a third-degree burn. In this case the thickness of the skin becomes white and leathery in appearance. There is also technically such a thing as a fourth-degree burn, where the burn goes down into the bones and tendons.