Consumer Product Safety & Labeling Compliance

Overview
Consumer products are those products found on the shelves of your local grocery store, hardware store, auto-parts store, or in big-box retail stores like Walmart or Target, or that you can purchase through online retailers like Amazon. Consumer products can range from children’s toys, art supplies, cleaning chemicals and automotive maintenance and detailing products, to lawn mowers and power tools. Consumer products that contain hazardous chemical substances often require special labeling and if they lack these warnings can be deemed misbranded and pulled from the shelves. Furthermore, manufacturers of consumer products can be liable for an injury that results from a failure to properly warn.

Experien Health Sciences has the expertise to help consumer product manufacturers:

• Determine which products require special labeling, and determine whether U.S. CPSC/FHSA, Canadian CCCR, OSHA GHS, EU CLP, GB CLP, Canada WHMIS, California Prop. 65, California Cleaning Products Regulations, or a combination of these labeling regulations apply.
• Advise on product testing that may be needed to properly identify and classify any chemical, physical (flammability/combustibility), and/or health hazards that may apply.
• Help properly address special hazards associated with aerosol products, art materials / art supplies, and products that contain benzene, toluene, xylene, petroleum distillates, methanol, and EU or UK restricted substances.
• Assess the potential hazards of each product and identify the correct signal word, hazard symbols or pictograms, hazard and precautionary statements, negative and positive instructions, first aid statements, and other cautionary material that apply.
• Determine the correct font sizes, letter type (upper or lower case, bolded or un-bolded), symbol or pictogram size, and determine the proper placement of the information on the container.
• Review your proposed draft labeling for compliance, and work with your graphic design team to address any deficiencies.
• Identify challenges you may face as you work to distribute your products through any of the large brick-and-mortar and online retailers.

With so many different product labeling requirements to contend with and because of a transition away from Mom & Pop retailers, it has become increasingly common for large retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and AutoZone to review a supplier’s product labeling before accepting products into their system.

In the U.S. hazardous chemical products marketed to consumers are regulated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) and its corresponding regulations. In Canada, these products are regulated by Health Canada under the Consumer Product Safety Act and the Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations (CCCR). Each of these regulations have very different requirements that make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to have one product label for all of North America. Furthermore, these requirements must not be confused with the regulations governing chemicals used by workers in industrial and/or professional settings which are based on the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals. While some parts of the world, like the EU and UK, have adopted GHS for their consumer products, the U.S. has not, and Canada has only begun to explore this option.