Table Saw Safety Rule being viewed by CPSC

http://www.machineking.com/table-saw-safety-rule-being-viewed-by-cpsc.html#31

WASHINGTON -- Table saw safety remains on the radar of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The CPSC held a May 25 meeting requested by the National Consumers League seeking a national mandatory table saw safety standard. Attendees included Adam Thull and Curtis Harper, hobbyist woodworkers who were injured in separate table saw accidents.

Also in attendance were Steve Gass and Dave Fanning of SawStop. Gass first petitioned the CPSC in 2003 to require that manufacturers use his SawStop table saw safety device on their products.

 Thull described how he was injured working on a table saw in his home workshop. He said he had removed the saw's blade guard because using it slowed down his work. the injury that he had suffered while working on a table saw in his home workshop. The injury has deprived Thull of motor skills in his right arm and resulted in multiple surgeries. He was forced to quit his job and go on public assistance.

Harper said he has suffered two separate injuries operating a table saw in his home. The more recent injury, which occurred while he was working on a home improvement project, resulted in the loss of a finger. Harper said he had removed the saw's blade guard because he was more fearful of a potential kick-back injury that he thought could be created from the use of the guard. He said he had reached this conclusion because he previously experienced a kick-back related injury that almost cost him the use of his thumb with the guard on the table saw.

Thull and Harper each said they had used table saws professionally. They further stated that neither manufacturer-installed nor after-market guards allowed for full functionality of a table saw and provided protection only 50 percent of the time at most. While both men told CPSC commissioners that they were aware of the SawStop technology, both stated that they were not there to endorse it, only to ask for some technology to provide better protection for table saw users than was currently available.

After thanking both presenters for sharing their stories, CPSC Commissioner Robert Adler said he agreed that table saws present a safety hazard. While noting that he also was not a champion for SawStop, he is interested in improving table saw safety as much as is technologically feasible at a cost that did not make the product prohibitive. He added that the CPSC is required undertake a cost/benefit analysis in any rulemaking process.

That said, Adler said he favored pursuing an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in order to receive public feedback on the issue. He noted that all the commissioners were equally concerned about consumer injuries and that this issue, in part because of the patents held by Gass, was a "particularly thorny one."

Many table saw manufacturers, plus the Power Tool Institute, have gone on record that they are concerned that SawStop could enjoy a monopoly if CPSC or other government agency mandates its use on table saws.

The renewed call for table saw safety, and potential for SawStop to be government specified, made national headlines in spring 2010 when a Boston jury awarded $1.5 million to a man whose hand was severely injured while operating a Ryobi saw. The plaintiff's legal team successfully convinced the jury that table saw design is “defective” and that their client’s injury could have been prevented if the saw had been outfitted with a safety device like the SawStop, which immediately brakes a blade if if comes into contact with skin.

Economy Growth to Accelerate in Second Half of 2011

Why Economists See a Stronger Second Half for 2011

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and PAUL WISEMAN AP Economics Writers

WASHINGTON June 27, 2011 (AP)

Farewell and good riddance to the first half of 2011 — six months that are ending as sour for the economy as they began. 

Most analysts say economic growth will perk up in the second half of the year. The reason is that the main causes of the slowdown — high oil prices and manufacturing delays because of the disaster in Japan — have started to fade.

"Some of the headwinds that caused us to slow are turning into tail winds," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. 

For an economy barely inching ahead two years after the Great Recession ended, the first half of 2011 can't end soon enough. Severe storms and rising gasoline prices held growth in January, February and March to a glacial annual rate of 1.9 percent.

The current quarter isn't shaping up much better. The average growth forecast of 38 top economists surveyed by The Associated Press is 2.3 percent.

The economy has to grow 3 percent a year just to hold the unemployment rate steady and keep up with population growth. And it has to average about 5 percent growth for a year to lower the unemployment rate by a full percentage point. It is 9.1 percent today.

As welcome as the stronger growth envisioned in the second half is, the improvement should be modest. For the final six months of the year, the AP economists forecast a growth rate of 3.2 percent.

So far this year, high gas and food prices have discouraged people from spending much on other things — from furniture and appliances to dinners out and vacations. That spending fuels economic growth.

And some U.S. auto factories had to suspend or trim production after the March earthquake in Japan interrupted supplies of parts and electronics. American dealerships have had fewer cars to sell.

The latest dose of glum news: The government reported Monday that consumer spending was about the same in May as in April, the first time in a year that spending hasn't increased from the previous month.

The report confirmed the toll that high gas prices, Japan-related disruptions and high unemployment have taken on personal spending in the second quarter.

"Here's to a better third," says Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Relief is in sight, economists say. Oil prices have been falling since Memorial Day. The drop has lowered the price of regular unleaded gasoline by 23 cents in the past month, to a national average of $3.57 a gallon, according to AAA.

The timing of the drop in gas prices is especially fortunate because they usually rise during summer driving season, says Robert DiClemente, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup.

And the kinks in the global manufacturing chain are starting to be smoothed out as the Japanese factories that make cars and electronics resume production.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, says auto sales should improve "quite substantially" later this year because the lost production from the earthquake is coming back faster than had been expected.

One sign of that rebound came when the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported Monday that manufacturing in the Midwest rebounded in May after falling sharply in April.

And last week, the government said orders for machinery, computers, cars and other durable goods rose slightly in May after dropping in April. 

Economists attributed the turnaround, in part, to Japanese factories that started to rev up.

The U.S. economy is also expected to get a slight second-half boost from reconstruction in flood-ravaged sections of the South and Midwest. Construction workers will be employed rebuilding homes and businesses. People will replace destroyed cars and other possessions. Analysts predict the economic losses from the floods in the April-June quarter will be reversed in the July-September quarter.

AP

In this June 23, 2011 photo, Jodi Thomas, a... View Full Caption

The economists surveyed by AP predict unemployment will fall to 8.7 percent at year's end. It is not exactly the start of a boom: The economy is still carrying too much baggage from the financial crisis — damaged banks, depressed home prices, debt-burdened consumers — to achieve much liftoff.

Though some of the economy's weakness in the first half is temporary, "it is hard to see much on the horizon to cheer about," Swonk says.

AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.