Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203060064
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY TED GUEST and RICHARD J. NEWMAN U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Like a thousand other things found around the house, they are what they are, bought to serve an obvious need. They hardly appear sinister - and yet consumers who buy them bring home a threat. A hazard. A product that could maim, even kill.
Warnings conveyed on labels or in instructions for products seemingly blare messages of potential cuts, poisonings, electrocution, smothering, abrasions, choking, falls and other dangers, including death.
And a pending Supreme Court case could bring on a fresh onslaught of labels. In a ruling expected by midsummer, the justices may decide that health warnings required on cigarette packs since 1966 are enough to get manufacturers off the hook, relieving them from paying damages to those who charge the tobacco industry with failing to inform them that smoking causes cancer.
The crazy-quilt proliferation of warnings seems bound to get worse. American and even international regulators are constantly expanding the scope of hazard advisories. The trend has caught the critical eye of legal experts, economists and communications theorists, many of whom believe that verbiage does not necessarily mean safety.
These specialists are working on ways of bringing a dose of reasonableness to the growing glut of alarmism.
Experts worry that the warnings, many of them wordy and incomprehensible, have multiplied to the point that consumers simply ignore them.
In a study involving two highly toxic products - a liquid drain opener and a wood cleaner - 88 percent of consumers saw the warning labels, but only 46 percent read them and just 27 percent took recommended precautions such as wearing rubber gloves or masks.
As for cigarette warnings, "Almost everyone is aware that they can become seriously ill if they smoke, but 30 percent still smoke," said Gerald Goldhaber, a communications professor and labeling authority at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He concludes that a sizable number of consumers "will behave unsafely even after getting the warning."
Overload may keep warnings from being heard, let alone heeded. A quick survey of one reporter's household yielded more than 50 products with warnings. They ranged from a toboggan label instructing riders to sit upright and face forward to an alert that metal objects should not be placed in a baby-bottle warmer. A thorough list would have included warnings on aspirin and deodorant to tile cleaner and contact-lens solution.
Lawsuits are partly to blame for the warnings surge.
A frequent argument in the tens of thousands of suits filed against companies every year after injuries or deaths is that the manufacturer did not adequately warn of possible dangers. Multimillion-dollar verdicts are rare, but enough plaintiffs succeed that some companies figure they had better list every conceivable hazard.
That might explain a note on a box of staples: "Staples have sharp points. Keep out of reach of children." Or that 19 separate warnings and precautions accompany instructions with a Vidal Sassoon hair dryer.
Moreover, dozens of federal and state laws require products like pharmaceuticals and tampons to carry warnings. Federal agencies that regulate drugs, agriculture, motor vehicles and consumer products enforce such laws, and from time to time create rules of their own.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is due to vote this month on whether to order warnings on packages of marbles, balloons, tiny balls and young children's toys with small parts, any of which could be inhaled and cause choking. About 20 children a year die and many more are hurt when they put such items in their mouths.
Companies that do considerable business abroad also will have to heed international trends. European Community rules, which are even tougher than those in the United States because of the polyglot of languages, are likely to expose more American consumers to symbols like a double triangle, commonly used in Europe to signify danger.
On many existing labels, clarity takes a back seat to information. Labels often "consist of quickly devised messages created by ill-informed but well-intentioned engineers and lawyers," says George Peters, a Los Angeles product-liability lawyer.
A recent survey by the CPSC concludes that warnings don't work awfully well. Various studies, said the commission, show that the effectiveness of warning labels varies from 0 to 100 percent - "wide variations" was the CPSC's term - depending on consumers' perceptions of danger and the ease of compliance.
Yet a small change in wording can have big results. In proposing more toy warnings, the CPSC staff cited a study of people buying toys for young children. Of these buyers, 44 percent said they would purchase an item with a label saying "recommended for 3 and up," but only 5 percent would buy if the label were reworded to "not recommended for below 3 - small parts."
The most intense conflicts often involve no label at all. In 1985, 15-month-old David Ayers of Tacoma, Wash., suffered severe brain damage after inhaling baby oil that his sister had poured into a different container. The family won $2.5 million when the jury agreed with the argument that manufacturer Johnson & Johnson should have alerted consumers to the danger of inhaling baby oil.
Business groups tried to make a test case out of the Ayers appeal by filing briefs supporting Johnson & Johnson's protest that manufacturers should not be required to warn of every possible fluky misuse of a product like baby oil, which essentially is mineral oil.
"He who warns of everything warns of nothing," the American Tort Reform Association, an industry group, told the Washington Supreme Court. The group argued that upholding the Ayers verdict would prompt manufacturers to pour out ever more warnings, regardless of their effectiveness. But the court upheld the verdict last November, ruling that the kind of "predictable infant behavior" at issue "necessitates that consumers and parents be alerted."
Most safety experts and legal scholars insist this is a smoke screen. "Manufacturers vastly overestimate the knowledge people have about hazards and risks," says Kenneth Laughery, a psychologist at Rice University who studies warnings. "The `everybody knows' argument usually is not valid." What's needed, says Laughery, is a clear and unmistakable message. Playtex and the bottler of Dr Pepper and 7-Up hired Buffalo's Goldhaber to help design warnings that cut through the clutter to grab consumers' attention. Playtex ended up redesigning its box so that before using a tampon, a woman must remove a slip bearing a large-print warning, "Attention: Tampons are associated with toxic-shock syndrome." The Dr Pepper and 7-Up bottles now warn users that the cap may blow off, causing eye injuries.
A national "warnings vocabulary" would help bring about more easy-to-read labels, says the American Law Institute, an organization of scholars that promotes legal reforms.
For example, one symbol on a pesticide might indicate a 5 percent risk of injury; a different symbol on a household cleaner might signify a .005 percent risk. Manufacturers using the recommended symbols and explanatory language would be freed from liability. Economist Kip Viscusi of Duke University, a co-author of the proposal, says it should be accompanied by thorough studies of what makes warnings effective. As it is, he says, "there is very little testing to determine what labels work."
by CNB