Proclamation 7082

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

More than 21,000 Americans lose their lives each year in accidents involving consumer products, and more than 29 million are injured. These accidents cost our Nation over $200 billion annually, and the cost in terms of human suffering is immeasurable.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is on the front line of the Federal Government's efforts to protect the safety and well-being of our citizens, especially our children. The CPSC monitors the performance of more than 15,000 types of consumer products and secures the recall of those that prove to be defective and potentially hazardous. Last year alone, the CPSC negotiated 362 recalls involving over 76 million individual consumer products that presented a significant risk to the public. But getting dangerous products off store shelves is only the first step. The real challenge is getting them out of the homes of people who have already purchased them.

On April 16, the CPSC, in conjunction with State and local governments and community organizations across the country, will conduct the second annual Recall Round-Up Day. This initiative is a public safety campaign to warn Americans that they may still be exposing themselves and their families to recalled products that could seriously injure or even kill them. Despite recalls and safety alerts issued by the CPSC, many of these hazardous products are still in consumers' homes or can be purchased at secondhand stores and garage sales.

This year's Recall Round-Up effort will spotlight the dangers associated with five types of previously recalled consumer products: playpens, bunk beds, halogen floor lamps, hand-held hair dryers, and lawn darts. The CPSC encourages government officials, health, safety, and consumer agencies, community organizations, and the media to alert the American people-particularly parents and child care providers-to the importance of repairing, returning, or destroying any of these products if they have been recalled. I encourage all Americans to make use of this vital information to protect the safety and health of their families and to avoid preventable tragedies.

Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 16, 1998, as National Recall Round-Up Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day by working with safety, health, and consumer agencies and other appropriate community organizations to organize and conduct local round-ups of dangerous and defective consumer products and to warn parents, child care providers, and the general public about the hazards of using recalled consumer products.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-second.

William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., April 16, 1998]