jikMarch Recall Roundup – Plummeting Chandeliers And Ceiling Fansde

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In this month’s Recall Roundup for non-edible items, fans and chandeliers might plummet from the ceiling, handlebars on kids’ bikes and amphibious vehicles for grown-ups fall apart, and cocktail glasses shatter for no reason. Also, there are 40,000 portable heaters out there that could spray hot oil on their owners at any time.

Babies & Kids

KTM Children’s Pajamas – Do not meet flammability standards.

Lazy One Children’s Pajamas and Robes – Do not meet flammability standard.

Dream on Me 2-in-1 Bassinet to Cradle – Frame supports can collapse, posing a suffocation hazard.

Mima Moon 3-In-1 High Chairs – Seat may come loose. No reported baby injuries.

PouchPop Baby Food Pouch Topper – Tube may come unattached from base, posing a choking hazard. There have been four reports of this happening, but no injuries.

Toys

LS Import Airplane and Butterfly Push Toys – Parts that fall off toys may pose a choking hazard. No reported injuries.

Tough Treadz Auto Carrier (Family Dollar) – Cars in auto carrier have sharp edges that may cut children.

Tools

Cosco Convertible Hand Trucks – Wheels may break and hurl pieces at people standing nearby. There have been 10 reports of this happening, and 4 reported injuries.

ZETA by Jackco Pocket Jump Starter – Battery may overheat and split apart and melt. 487 reported battery problems and two fires that caused property damage reported.

Kidde Disposable Plastic Fire Extinguishers – Devices fail to discharge fully. There have been 11 reported incidents.

Furniture

Brewmaster Ceiling Fans – Fans may become detached and fall. Two incidents reported, but no injuries.

Kitchen

Tommy Bahama Hula Girl Cocktail Shaker and Glass Sets – Glass may unexpectedly shatter. Five incidents reported, including one injury that required stitches.

Appliances

Dirt Devil Scorpion Turbo Tool – Fan may break and come out of the housing. Six units have had this problem.

Kenmore 24-inch electric ranges – Cooking surface and electric output may not meet correctly, causing an electric shock. No incidents reported.

Safe Step Walk-In Tubs – Heated seat may get stuck switched “on” and overheat.

i4 Series System Sensor combination carbon monoxide (CO)/smoke detectors – May not detect carbon monoxide, which is sort of the point.

Holmes Oil Filled Heaters – May spray hot oil on people and objects nearby. There have been 40 oil-spraying incidents reported, but no injuries.

Lifepro Portable Mini Space Heaters – Risk of electric shock. No reported incidents.

Decor

Aquarium Motion Lamps (Bits & Pieces) – May overheat, fire hazard. There have been eleven lamps reported overheating, and some sparking, but no fires.

Hayneedle Fiber Optic Lighted Christmas Trees – Motor that makes colors rotate can overheat. 20 incidents reported, but no fires.

Sea Gull Lighting Chandeliers – The part that attaches the chandelier to the ceiling mount can fail, causing the whole fixture to fall. No people have been injured, but there have been four reports of falling chandeliers causing $1,600 in property damage.

Vehicles

Quadski and Quadski XL Amphibious Vehicles – Handlebar may fail while driving. This happened three times during testing, injuring one of the testers.

Sports & Outdoors

Rapala StrikeMaster Lithium Lazer Ice Augers – Off switch may fail to work, when drills really should turn off. No reported injuries.

Flow 2014 Flite-series snowboard bindings – Bindings may come un-bound. 30 reported incidents, but no injuries to date.

2015 Scott Vanish Evo Bicycle Helmets – Do not meet CPSC standards for bicycle helmets.

Zipp 88 aluminum hubs for bicycle wheels – Flange ring may fail, causing wheel collapse. Two incidents, which resulted in cuts, bruises, and a concussion.

Marin Mountain Bikes Children’s Bicycles – Handlebars may come loose. No reported injuries.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikNew York Papa John’s Franchisee Ordered To Pay Worker More Than $2M For Wage Violationsde

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(Aaron Tyo-Dickerson)

A New York Papa John’s franchisee must pay more than $2 million to workers as part of a judgment resolving charges that the company underpaid hundreds of delivery workers at five Harlem-area restaurants.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the judgment Thursday resolving a lawsuit and investigation into the pay practices of New Majority Holdings, LLC and its owner and operator.

A lawsuit filed against New Majority by Schneiderman’s office last year claimed the franchisee violated New York Labor law by rounding down workers’ hours to the nearest whole hour increment; failing to pay legally required overtime premiums; paying delivery workers the lower, “tipped” minimum wage, even though they were assigned to a substantial amount of untipped kitchen and other wooers; and failed to reimburse employees for the costs of purchasing and maintaining bicycles used to make deliveries.

This week’s judgment settles those charges and requires New Majority to pay workers $2,126,166.34 in owed wages, unreimbursed expenses, liquidated damages, and interest.

“We will continue to investigate wage and hour violations in the fast food industry,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “More broadly, franchisors need to step up to the plate. I call on all fast food franchisors, including Papa John’s, to take steps necessary to ensure that their workers — the backbone of their business — are treated fairly and paid the wages the law requires.”

Schneiderman’s office has delved into worker pay issues frequently in recent years.

Last October, the AG announced a judgment against a separate Papa John’s franchisee – Emstar Pizza, Inc. – in which the company would had to pay $800,000 for unfair pay practices.

In March 2014, the office reached a $500,000 agreement with several McDonald’s locations for failing to pay legally required laundry allowances for many employees, for uncompensated work time and for unlawful deductions from wages.

A.G. Schneiderman Obtains Judgment For More Than $2 Million Against Papa John’s Franchisee That Underpaid Employees [New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

jikTSA Finds Stowaway Chihuahua In Passenger’s Suitcasede

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(TSA)

We’re big fans of the Transportation Safety Administration’s hashtag-happy Instagram account, since we enjoy gawking at weaponry that people have tried to sneak on planes, from ammo-filled Bibles to throwing stars. Yet the TSA protected one traveler from a horrifying discovery at the end of her trip: her dog had stowed away in her suitcase, and she didn’t even know it.

My late dog would pull things out of my suitcase after I packed them, but this pup had a different plan to disrupt its owner’s travel. “While resolving a checked baggage alarm, an officer was shocked when he found a dog in the bag!” the TSA explains. It’s good to hear that a bag full of canine would set off some kind of alarm, since the dog could have suffocated inside the hard plastic suitcase. They tracked down the stowaway’s owner and reunited them. The TSA did not specify whether the traveler had to disrupt her plans to bring the dog home, or went along with its wishes and brought it along on the trip.

Ay, Chihuahua [Instagram]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikFather Of Teen Poisoned By Caffeine Powder Files Lawsuit Blaming His Death On Supplement Makers, Amazonde

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(Carbon Arc)

The father of an Ohio teen who died in 2014 after ingesting a powdered caffeine marketed as a dietary supplement has filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com and the product’s distributors, claiming that they failed to provide proper warnings about the dangers of using the substance.

When the 18-year-old died, the amount of caffeine in his system was about 23 times greater than the level in a typical soda or coffee drinker, and a coroner ruled that his death was due to cardiac arrhythmia and seizure due to acute caffeine toxicity.

Since then, the Food and Drug Administration has warned people against ingesting pure caffeine, saying that a single teaspoon of the stuff is equivalent to 25 cups of coffee. Even then, it “is nearly impossible to accurately measure powdered pure caffeine with common kitchen measuring tools and you can easily consume a lethal amount,” the FDA cautioned last summer.

The lawsuit filed today lists defendants as a classmate who gave the teen the powder, reports the Associated Press; Amazon for shipping the powder to the classmate and six companies in Arizona that the father’s lawyer says packaged and sold the powder under the name Hard Rhino. He says it appears the companies are related.

According to the lawsuit, the package label informs users that a cup of coffee has about 1/32nd of a teaspoon of a caffeine, but though it also warns that the powder “can be dangerous if abused,” and “failure to follow safety guidelines can result in serious injury or death,” it lacks specific instructions on proper use.

The thought being, if you don’t know how much you are supposed to take, how do you know if you’re abusing it or are in danger?

“The difference between life and death is a pinch and a smidgen,” the attorney says, adding that Amazon has a team of compliance specialists that is supposed to review products before they can be sold on the site.

The father’s attorney says that despite the fact that Hard Rhino stopped selling the powder in light of the FDA’s warning, he was able to order the product from another company off the Internet recently.

“It’s still out there,” he said.

Amazon declined to comment to the AP, and the six companies in Arizona didn’t respond to messages.

Father of Ohio teen poisoned by caffeine powder files suit [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikLawmakers Want To Know Who’s Tracking You Online, And Where The Info Goesde

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(Mr Seb)

Everything you do online — on your phone, on your computer, with anything — leaves a digital wake. Put those trails together and you’ve got one massive big data industry that can (and does) track it all and sell it to the highest bidder. After decades of digital detritus building up, regulators and Congress both are contemplating some steps that would help protect consumers’ info.

The FTC will be holding a workshop this fall on how, and how much, companies are tracking you across multiple platforms on the big wide internet. Such workshops are often the first step in a long information-gathering process that can culminate in new rules.

Cross-platform tracking is the big thing for advertisers these days. Services like Facebook Atlas, for example, provide such cross-platform tracking to advertisers. If you are logged into the Facebook app on your phone, and you are logged into Facebook on your computer at work, Atlas will correlate both sets of data into one single profile for advertisers.

That includes information like “here are all the sites this person went to on this browser,” for your desktop, and “here are all the apps this person has and all the places GPS says this person went,” from your phone. Combine all of that information with all of the information you put on your Facebook profile — where you live, where you work, where you went to school, and rings upon rings of people you know and their information — and it’s a rich haul indeed for advertisers who want to goad you into spending more money.

This is not the FTC’s first foray into the world of big data; the agency has become responsible for consumer privacy and the use of consumer data almost by default. They have previously held workshops and published reports on the breadth and depth of the big data industry, which tracks and trades basically everything anyone does anywhere.

Some members of Congress are also now trying to take action on last year’s FTC big data report. Several senators — Richard Blumenthal (CT), Ed Markey (MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Al Franken (MN) — have introduced the Data Broker Accountability and Transparency Act.

The bill would allow individuals to opt-out from companies using, sharing, or selling their personal data for marketing purposes. The bill would also require the FTC to set up a centralized clearinghouse-type website for consumers, to notify them of their rights.

Sen. Markey introduced a similar bill last year that did not clear committee.

Who’s tracking you online? Senate Dems want answers [The Hill]

The FTC wants to know how companies are tracking you across computers and smartphones [The Washington Post]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

jikFDA Approves First “Biosimilar” Drug. Could Drive Down Cost Of Most Expensive Medicationsde

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(D O’Quinn)

Biotech drugs — which are generally derived from a living organism, as opposed to traditional purely chemical medications — are currently among the most expensive medicines available. But today, the Food and Drug Administration issued its first approval of a drug that is “biosimilar” to an existing biotech medication; a development that could possibly result in billions of dollars in savings.

But biotech drugs are sometimes so complex as to make exact replication for generic versions too expensive or difficult.

And so the 2010 Affordable Care Act allows for drugmakers to create biosimilar medications that will be if they can demonstrate they are highly similar to an already-approved “reference” product, and that the new drug “has no clinically meaningful differences in terms of safety and effectiveness from the reference product.”

The first FDA-approved biosimilar is Zarxio from New Jersey-based Sandoz, which the agency says is effectively the same as Amgen’s Neupogen (filgrastim), a drug given to chemotherapy patients to increase white blood cell counts. Zarxio will be approved for all the same therapeutic uses as Neupogen, and is in fact only approved for the indications and conditions of the older drug.

While the FDA says the two drugs are biosimilar, it does not deem them “interchangeable,” meaning patients currently on Neupogen can’t just switch over to Zarxio unless the original prescribing physician approves the change.

And because the two drugs are not entirely identical, Zarxio can’t yet share the filgrastim nonproprietary name of Neupogen. For now, the FDA is assigning the placeholder name of “filgrastim-sndz,” until the issue of nonproprietary names for biosimilars is resolved.

The ultimate hope for biosimilar drugs is that, much like the availability of generic drugs give consumers and physicians lower-cost treatment options, biosimilar drugs will result in more affordable biotech medications.

“Biosimilars will provide access to important therapies for patients who need them,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg in a statement. “Patients and the health care community can be confident that biosimilar products approved by the FDA meet the agency’s rigorous safety, efficacy and quality standards.”

Prescription benefits giant Express Scripts believes that the introduction of just Zarxio could save consumers and the healthcare system $5.7 billion over the next decade. If the 11 leading candidates for biosimilar status are also approved, the company projects a total savings of $250 billion in ten years.

Among the potential big-ticket drugs facing competition from biosimilars is the world’s best-selling prescription drug, Humira (adalimumab), which brought in more than $12 billion worldwide for AbbVie last year.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

jikConsumers Want To Eat More Local Beef, But There Aren’t Enough Butchers These Daysde

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(Emerson 113)

Does the idea of a hard day at work cutting up cattle carcasses appeal to you? If not, you’re not alone: Despite the growing trend toward eating more local beef, there simply aren’t enough people going into the profession of butchering to meet the increased demand.

The Associated Press spoke to one butcher who’s been in the meat-processing business for 38 years slaughtering cattle, who says he can see why few people want to get into the profession these days.

“It’s killing cows. It’s blood and guts,” he explains. He runs a small company with his wife in Iowa, and his three kids don’t want to follow in his footsteps.

Across the country, thousands of butchers are getting closer to retirement, without enough younger butchers with small companies willing to take on the task. In Iowa, for example, there were 450 small meat processors. Now, there are 140 or fewer.

This means small farmers who are already trucking their cattle 50 or 100 miles to get the meat processed by butchering businesses have to pass those increased transportation costs onto retailers and then, consumers.

But as butchers age out of the profession, those farmers will have to look elsewhere to get their beef to stay “local.” As it stands right now, those small meat processors are overwhelmed with business, and can’t find enough workers to keep up.

“We’re booked like four to five months in advance,” said the owner of a butchering shop in Ohio. And “finding anyone to help to work is harder and harder.”

To be sure, there are some new shops opening up as the demand for specialty meat grows, but it’s not easy or cheap to do so, Lauren Gwin, a professor at Oregon State University who coordinates the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network told the AP.

“It’s a complex business,” said Gwin, whose group’s goal is to overcome the issues facing the industry. “You have to know a lot of things to run a business like this.”

More want local beef, but fewer want tough job of cutting it [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist