The federal agency responsible for keeping dangerous products off American shelves has grown smaller, slower, and less open to the public, according to a new investigation from Consumer Reports. The nonprofit says the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which oversees roughly 15,000 categories of products sold in the United States, has pulled back from public engagement even as hazardous goods keep turning up in the marketplace.
A Watchdog Agency Under Scrutiny
According to Consumer Reports, the CPSC has not held a press conference since 2024, and the organization points to the firings of three CPSC commissioners in spring 2025 as a turning point that interviewees cited for the agency's shift. The stakes are considerable: the commission's own estimates, cited in the investigation, tie harmful consumer products to about 36 million emergency-room visits and 59,000 deaths in 2023. Consumer Reports and other safety advocates argue the agency should work proactively to make the marketplace safer through education and strong regulations rather than waiting to respond with recalls after people are already injured or killed.
The investigation also reported that many new safety rules advocates consider vital have stalled even as product recalls have spiked, a dynamic the report frames as a central tension at the agency. Former staffers and outside safety experts told the outlet that executive orders and new agency leadership have made it harder to advance new safety rules, though the same reporting notes the commission is still free to enforce the rules already on its books.
CPSC Points To Record Recall Numbers
The agency itself tells a different story about its recent performance. In a news release cited in the reporting, the CPSC said it issued 542 recalls and warnings in 2025, calling it a 32 percent increase over the prior year and an all-time agency record. CPSC spokesperson Steve Roney said the commission has enjoyed “the most successful and effective two years in its history,” adding that it issued more product recalls, public safety warnings, and product takedown notices than in any other one- or two-year period. Roney also pointed to a renewed focus on interdiction at ports of entry as part of that effort.
The gap between those two characterizations is stark: Consumer Reports describes an agency that has become harder to reach and slower to issue new protections, while the commission's own account emphasizes record enforcement numbers. Both versions appear in the reporting, and the dossier underlying this story does not resolve which framing better captures the agency's overall trajectory.
What Consumers Can Still Do
Despite its criticisms, Consumer Reports said the CPSC remains the best place to go for help with a product problem. The commission's own consumer guidance says people can report product injuries, harm, or risks through SaferProducts.gov, a publicly searchable database maintained by the agency. Consumer Reports also advised shoppers to be wary of third-party marketplaces and to favor trusted vendors when buying household goods.
Separately, federal rulemaking records show the scope of what the commission has weighed in recent years. A Federal Register filing describes a proposed table-saw performance standard that would require saws to limit the depth of cut to no more than 3.5 millimeters when a test probe approaches the spinning blade at one meter per second, though that record describes a proposal rather than an adopted final standard. Another Federal Register filing shows the commission preliminarily determined in 2023 that acute carbon-monoxide poisoning from portable generators presented an unreasonable risk of injury and death.
News4JAX, which carried the Consumer Reports findings, noted the commission's responsibility is ultimately to protect people from dangerous products reaching their homes. For now, the dueling accounts of recall records and shrinking oversight leave consumers with a mixed picture of an agency whose mission remains the same even as its day-to-day operations are described very differently by its critics and by the commission itself.
