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Safety Commission To Rule On Safety of Rulers In Science Kits
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been trying decide for weeks if science kits designed to teach children are safe enough for children to use without vigorous testing. It's not just the chemicals or sharp items in the kits that they are troubled with however. They are also concerned about the dangers of paper clips, magnets, and rulers. From the article: "Science kit makers asked for a testing exemption for the paper clips and other materials. The commission declined to grant them a blanket waiver as part of the guidance the agency approved Wednesday on a 3-2 vote." To be fair, paper clips can cause a lot of damage — just look at what Clippy did to Microsoft Office.
why the poor science education in the United States is such a big problem?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
If our kids aren't smart enough to use a ruler without injury, what can we really expect them to learn?
....that the "My First Meth Lab" is probably never going to reach store shelves?
It's clearly irresponsible to expose kids to some rulers; Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin and under certain conditions George W Bush
"Windows are for cheaters" - Bruce Springsteen
If rulers are too dangerous for these guys, just stop for a moment and think about how dangerous a keyboard or a mouse could be. It could never happen.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I must say that I find the concerns raised by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to be lacking. They haven't, for example, considered the considerable harms posed by the science kits manual itself. The risk of a paper cut is considerable.
Because where is the fun in that? See, chemistry sets are designed to encourage children to pursue science. If you are just doing it on the computer, why not just play a FPS on the computer? It doesn't teach kids to really explore or to think like a scientist.
The Consumer Product Safety commission should only be concerned about things that are really hazards when used correctly or things that are easily used incorrectly, for example, lead based paint on children's toys, yeah thats a real concern. The fact that some children -might- -possibly- use some materials in a science kit and get hurt is nearly non-existent.
The more we regulate science kits and lose children's natural curiosity in the world around us by essentially telling them that anyplace other than indoors watching TV and doing a bit of exercise on the treadmill is going to kill them, the more we can watch the US slip further and further into the dark ages...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The only reason we have safe laboratories today is because in the 1970's, science kits killed the careless ones.
Hell, even our playgrounds weeded out the stupid.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
The federal commission of me agrees: science should be banned in the USA, so should be the last remnants of common sense; any display of individuality and unhealthy interest in any particular subject need to be investigated to establish the safety of such behavior as it relates to the society in total.
Everything must be made not just safe enough, but safe with a huge margin of error so that there is no chance of any accident happening ever at all. Of-course accidents are mostly responsible for a large number of scientific discoveries, so any evidence of scientific discovery must be investigated to isolate the main reason and find out where the safety procedures have failed to prevent such an occurrence to make sure it never happens again.
Have a safe day.
You can't handle the truth.
I have seen Xrays of children that have swallowed magnets - it aint good, and probably could have been prevented yet still allowed children to explore magnetism. magnets are also much stronger and more brittle than they were when I was a kid, the risks have changed and it is responsible to review policy. I don't think anyone wants to stop children learning here and I don't want to buy a science kit for my kid that's full of things that are more dangerous than they need to be.
By all means balance risk against learning benefit, but let there be some balance, not just recklessness to save a penny by not removing the sharp edges on a ruler.
Nullius in verba
As someone who has played with software based labs, it doesn't compare to the real thing. It's one thing to click on two test tubes and have a thrid change color, but it entirely different to see the color change in real life as you add the reagents.
Science used to be cool because it was exciting. Small explosions, corrosive chemicals, and chemical reactions are cool, clicking some buttons on a computer program to simulate this is lame. If you want kids to like science, it needs to be (somewhat) dangerous. Schools should be encouraging thinking (ie. fire is hot so don't burn yourself, don't drink/touch hydrochloric acid, etc). If a few kids get hurt, well, hopefully they at least learned something, even if that something is that science can be dangerous.
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You know all of those guys who worked for NASA in the 60s, designing and building the rockets that took us to the moon? Well, they had radioactive sources and Geiger counters in their science kits.
And kids today are going to have to fight to get paper clips and magnets. Sigh.
This is an important point - and I wonder if anyone has every bothered to investigate whether a bit of risky fun early in life is more likely to interest kids in science than teaching them from a rather dull text book. When I was a kid a bunch of us went on a school trip to a nuclear power reactor. When we visited the control room the senior engineer took us to a panel, turned a dial and made us watch as a temperature guage moved upwards - he had moved the control rod up out of the stack. He explained what was going on, we were all facinated, and then said he ought to put it back or the alarms might go off and he might get in trouble. Ok, not a chemistry set, but it highlights how engaging a bit of real world experimentation can be. I can't imagine kids these days could even get close to insides of a reactor, let alone play with control rods. Those were the days...
If you can find a copy, most likely digital and illegal as the physical version is rather rare bordering on non-existent, The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments has a lot of experiments that can be done with household items or other relatively common components.
"Many of the experiments contained in the book are now considered highly dangerous for unsupervised children, and would not appear in a modern children's chemistry book." from Wikipedia.
It's all fun and games until somebody is garroted by a peripheral cable... all the more reason to go wireless I suppose. But then you have hazardous batteries and nutjobs who think that very low power radio transmitters are going to give them cancer. You just can't win.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I think that the issue of kid safety actually is something that stops kids from learning because they are in an environment so pampered that they get completely lost whenever they have to leave home.
Of course kids hurt themselves now and then. It's part of the process, but as long as the injuries aren't permanent then it's experience gained.
But from a tin foil hat perspective it may be that all these "kid safety" issues are put in place just so that they can learn how to be a good consumer and not try to understand how things works.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This isn't about banning. This is about testing.
When I was a kid, someone had a cheap plastic ruler. He slapped it on my desk to wake me up one day and the damn thing shattered.
What the hell are paper clips doing in a science kit anyway? Is it part of the module on the boring bureaucracy of science?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The Consumer Product Safety commission should only be concerned about things that are really hazards when used correctly or things that are easily used incorrectly, for example, lead based paint on children's toys, yeah thats a real concern. The fact that some children -might- -possibly- use some materials in a science kit and get hurt is nearly non-existent.
Surprise! That is exactly what this is about, but the commission is being stupid. The makers of the science kits are bundling ordinary objects like rulers, paper clips, etc in their kits, and the commission is saying that they have to have a testing regime in place that tests everything that goes into the kits for lead and other toxic chemicals because it is arguably marketed to kids. The solution will be that the kit makers will stop making science kits, even something completely innocuous like "how magnetism works kit", because the burden of testing everything that goes into the kits outweighs the potential profit.
There was a very similar story a while back about low-powered motorcycles marketed to kids that had lead in the ENGINE. The end result looked like it was going to just destroy the market for the product simply on the basis that there was lead in it, regardless of the fact that even if a child disassembled the engine and ate the part in question, it was present in an alloy that would not release the lead into the child's system.
What the story is really about is the committee trying to make their mandate apply to absolutely everything, regardless of whether it had any real chance of causing damage to children.
I agree. Real explosions are fun. Real fire is fun. I still remember the day in 7th grade when we were finally allowed to use bunsen burners. It is in my top 10, despite losing an eyebrow. I think the danger of getting hurt or, in rare cases that probably involve doing something deeply stupid that might well disqualify you from the gene pool, killed are outweighed by just how a) fun and b) useful learning science can be.
And rulers? Rulers? Are you fucking kidding me?
words, words, words, lemur, words, words words
The more we regulate science kits and lose children's natural curiosity in the world around us by essentially telling them that anyplace other than indoors watching TV and doing a bit of exercise on the treadmill is going to kill them, the more we can watch the US slip further and further into the dark ages...
That's what the powers that be want. You think they want us to explore things for ourselves? To LEARN on our own without relying on the government to tell us what is fact and what is fiction? No, they want us to punch in, punch out, then go home and watch TV and be told what's going on.
Found it readily readable/downloadable here.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
I have a wonderful book from the 60s, "700 Science Experiments for Everyone", originally published as "UNESCO Source Book for Science Teaching." It was wonderful gems like "How to Make an Electric Toaster" ("Your problem is to find a convenient was to mount 5 metres (no less!) of nichrome wire in a space no larger than a slide of bread."), and cutting apart old torch batteries to get the carbon rods to make an arc light, connected directly to the mains via a rheostat made from wire-wound rocks immersed in salt water. Not to mention DIY test tubes, alcohol lamps, etc.
Or, you can grow up to be a lawyer, or someone who scrubs toilets for lawyers.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
They didn't treat us with kid gloves, we were supposed to be midget scientists, not young hooligans. They kept us in order by making anyone who screwed up too much sit out the year (no more practicals, they could just observe). We took liberties, but not *too* many[*].
:). Eventually it dries, falls off the table, goes 'BANG!' and throws fragments of itself all over the place. Of course, those bits dried faster, and they were all over the floor. Pretty soon, walking anywhere in the pavilion would set off more bangs as the stuff exploded underfoot. Then the headmaster walked in. We made ourselves scarce just in time. He wasn't amused :)
Of course, this was in the UK, not the USA. I can't vouch for how they treated kids over here - there's probably a whole bunch of stuff we did that's more dangerous than *rulers* too, but that was just off-the-top-of-my-head...
[*] Gun-cotton (basically cotton soaked in Nitric acid to form nitrocellulose) is pretty stable when it's wet, but when it dries out, small amounts of friction can set it off. We took a whole load of it to the pavilion on the yearly school sports-day, and forgot about it (we were playing Runequest in-between competing, I had shot-putt that day
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
As someone who has played with software based labs, it doesn't compare to the real thing. It's one thing to click on two test tubes and have a thrid change color, but it entirely different to see the color change in real life as you add the reagents.
Bingo. The same thing happens in astronomy, too. This summer I saw Saturn and its rings for the first time with my own eyes (well, through a telescope). It was a small white ball with thin bulges on the side, and yet that filled me with far more profound awe than all the high-res, full-colour pictures from the Voyager probes I've seen before.
Sad, but true. This is the same agency that nearly killed the sub-250cc motorcycle market because most of bikes (and ATVs as well) with engines that small are meant for kids to learn on. Yes, adults do occasionally ride 150-cc dirtbikes, but kids are the target user.
Why was this market nearly killed? The CPSC was afraid of kids licking the battery terminals and sucking on lead wheel-balancing weights. Never mind that kids can't really swallow these things, or that these parts won't poison you even if swallowed. They have lead, and lead is bad. The CPSC doesn't care to look any further than that.
"osake no hou ga, biiru yori ii" to omotteiru.
Just to play devil's advocate here: what amounts to reasonable precautions is a function of scale, because you can amortize the cost of each expected injury over a larger number of units shipped.
As a thought experiment, suppose Miss Jones the science teacher puts together a science experiment kit for each of her 30 students. A representative kit is then sent to a safety engineering firm, which charges $10K to conclude there is a 0.2% chance of injury from the ruler, and that this could be reduced to 0.1% by using a slightly different ruler.
Now it almost certain that nobody is gong to be hurt by the offending ruler, and the engineering investment of $10K prevents an expected 0.03 injuries. That's over $300,000 per injury averted. That makes no economic sense unless the injury is horrific (e.g. requires lifetime institutionalization).
Now suppose JonesCo puts together a similar kit, and expects to ship 30 thousand units. In that case, it is almost *certain* that somebody is going to get hurt, although any *individual's* chance is quite small. The expected number of injuries saved by the engineering study is now 30. Amortizing the $10K study costs over 30 injuries means that you've spent just over 300 per injury saved. This is not quite justifiable for things like paper cuts of course, but an emergency room visit probably costs more than that.
So: the costs involved with a safety review may or may not be justifiable depending on the number of units that will be shipped.
In either case, the safety of the pre-study and post-study kits are practically indistinguishable. As a parent, I wouldn't freak out if the Miss Jones kit was used in place of the JonesCo kit, because we are talking about very, very rare accidents. But those freak accidents *do* happen and are worth considering *collectively*. I say this as a parent who has taken a toddler to the emergency room for an injury at preschool who sent that child right back to the same school the next day with the heart shaped bead he'd shoved up into his sinuses in his pocket.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You are exactly right. We moved a couple of years ago and the quality of the local school was the biggest single factor in deciding where we would live. We bought a low end home in a high end neighborhood and the public school is absolutely fantastic. New building, all new equipment, an abundance of parent volunteers, and fund raisers that raise crazy amounts of money for the schools. The maximum class size is 21 kids. The school has fully funded art, theater arts and music programs.
The downside is high property taxes. More than $600 / month on a $250k house. I think it's worth it though. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've found I really enjoy living in the suburbs.
Okay, I'm wandering way off-topic, but my karma can take it.....
I'm sick of the metric superiority thing. Yes, metric is more rational, and a nicer system. I'd love to see it become the standard everyday system of measurement in the U.S., but really the way some people go on about measurements you'd think that the metric system was TRUTH and everything else was the equivalent of Young Earth Creationism or Geocentrism.
Think about the following:
We use Euros, you use Dollars, you're backwards and we're not.
We use the Latin alphabet, you use Cyrillic, you're backwards and we're not.
We speak German, you speak Norwegian, you're backwards and we're not.
We pronounce the letter 'Z' as Zee, and you pronounce it as Zed, you're backwards, and we're not.
We use centimeters, you use inches, you're backwards and we're not.
Now, all of those are roughly on par, but aside from the last example, they're all pretty silly sounding. Yet the metric one is pretty commonly seen, which just strikes me as a little silly for something that technically has no "right" answer. Whatever you use is fine, be happy with it, who cares?
I know camperdave was probably just going for a quick throwaway joke, but the "Informative" mod got me thinking.....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
When I was a kid: Erector Sets had many choking hazard screws and metal pieces with unfinished razor sharp edges. Chemistry sets had actual chemicals in them. And I mixed them ALL together. And put electrodes in the goop and plugged it in the wall. A microscope kit came with xylene and actual glass slides etc. I set off rockets in the basement. I hooked all the transformers my dad had end to end to try to make a million volts. I took my prescription for potassium iodide to school and was called to the principal's office because some kid said I threw "acid" at him. I threw nothing at anyone. I made free iodine from my medicine by mixing it with acetic acid. Cool purple clouds!!! I made balsa airplanes using sharp razor blades and toxic glue. The rubber powered ones flew so high they looked like tiny dots in the sky. I made model cars with working suspension and purple metalflake paint jobs. I made a Battling Betsy tank with TWO electric motors that was nosebleed fast. Count me in for the Visible V8 and the Visible Radial Airplane Engine. AND IT WAS ALL GREAT!!!!! I am alive and well and have all my fingers and toes. Today I hear people are worried about paperclips and rulers being dangerous and chemistry is reduced to baking soda and vinegar. This is pitiful and sad.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
As someone with a lot of knowledge about regulatory requirements and conformity testing, I can say without a doubt the CPSC is on the right track here.
The industry's response is all posturing. Testing the metal edges in a ruler for harmful chemicals such as lead is very easy to do, and really not very expensive. Traceability of the raw materials to a source heat lot is essentially free. A single heat lot could produce tens of thousands of rulers, so a single metallurgical test may add a penny or two for a whole lot. There exist many standards for the plastic itself with regards to flame resistance and plastics testing but there is no national standard that I'm aware of regarding plastics toxicity and what is an acceptable level of lead and mercury.
If indeed the companies discontinue the kits because of the safety testing requirements, then that is basically an admission that they were never doing the safety testing of their own volition to begin with. I'm not even going to make up some bullshit "it's for the kids" argument. Fact is, citizens expect that the products companies sell are safe, whether they be for kids, adults or even pets. Kids may be the first to draw attention where a lack of safety testing exists, but we should all be demanding safer products for ourselves.
Instead of resisting this, they should be taking the opportunity to give themselves market differentiation by voluntarily starting safety testing.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Did they keep misspelling colour and centre and have trouble locating the boot of a car?
Oh good fucking grief.
The CPSC are a bunch of idiots. And you are right with them, that's for sure.
It used to be that our kids could get actually USEFUL science kits. Ones that would let them build things, try out different experiments, and yes, occasionally make something that smelled bad, or smoked, made a small bang. And we used to say one simple thing about them: parents, don't let your kid play with the kit unsupervised.
Now, of course, thanks to a generation of deadbeat fucking morons who think that kids raise themselves, we are instead stuck in a world where anything that could possibly be dangerous for kids is off-limits. Small wonder most American kids grow up today with their faces in front of the TV, either watching brain-rotting crap or playing repetitive, non-inspiring video games that should come with a warning "imagination not required" on the side, and getting fatter every day from it.
Instead of having the kids run around the world, try things, learn, and get the occasional scraped knee or other injury, now it's nothing but "OMG don't let the kids outside it might be DANGEROUS out there!"
While we're busy "thinking of the children", their brains are rotting away. Way to go, parents.