TSI backs call for product safety reform to save lives

Posted 29/09/14

The Trading Standards Institute (TSI) backs the call by the coroner in the latest BEKO fridge fire death case to reform the system around product safety standards.

Coroner Andrew Walker said at the inquest into the death of Santosh Benjamin-Muthiah, who was overcome by smoke at his home in November 2010, that he accepted recommendations put forward by Hertfordshire Trading Standards and London Fire Brigade about the way safety problems are recorded - he will now urge the government to reform safety standards. (Read the full BBC article.)

TSI’s product safety lead officer Christine Heemskerk has been campaigning for more than a decade for a comprehensive injury and accident database to make product safety regulation more effective.

She said: “A review of how safety problems are recorded in the UK is very much overdue – we have been without a central database for more than ten years now.  A comprehensive injury and accident database would help highlight areas of concern to enable authorities to take appropriate action, quickly, to help prevent accidents and improve product safety. 

“I have no doubt that having such a system in place would save lives.”

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