Citation

Wood C, Sala JB, Sanders K, Cassidy P. Proc. Hum. Factors Ergon. Soc. Annu. Meet. 2006; 50(17): 1798-1802.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/154193120605001716

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Consumer products available today in the United States often have safety information on and accompanying them. This practice is far more common now than earlier in the 20th century. In this paper, the evolution of the use of warnings with consumer products is examined as they appeared in voluntary standards provided by one national standard making body, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). ASTM had been developing consensus voluntary standards since 1898, but it was not until the 1970s that it first focused on consumer products. Over the next three decades there were increases in the number and type of consumer products included. Further, for any given product, the amount of safety information frequently increased with subsequent revisions of a standard. These trends in warnings generally parallel the patterns observed with federally mandated warnings for consumer products.

Language: en