Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), the Irving, Texas-baed not-for-profit association for more than 10,500 members of the $17.7 billion promotional products industry, yesterday announced that renowned product safety authority Dr. Carol Pollack-Nelson will be a featured speaker at its second annual Product Safety Summit (PSS) in New Orleans, August 14-15, 2012, at the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel.
During program sessions and panels, Dr. Pollack-Nelson, human factors psychologist and former senior engineering psychologist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), will discuss how to identify hazards in product designs and how to determine if a product is a children’s product, both integral steps in determining compliance standards that may apply to products.
“Attending the Product Safety Summit provides industry leaders an opportunity to get powerful insights into the key product safety challenges and solutions germane to the promotional products industry supply chain,” said Anne Lardner-Stone, director of public affairs for PPAI. “This being our second summit, we’ve only just begun the process of addressing standards, best practices and tools that will ensure this mission-critical responsibility is met by the entire industry now and in years to come.”
Dr. Pollack-Nelson is a human factors psychologist, having worked in the field of consumer safety since 1982. From 1988 through 1993, Pollack-Nelson served as a senior engineering psychologist at the CPSC. Since that time, she has worked independently as a human factors consultant and researcher in the field of consumer product safety.
Pollack-Nelson provides independent technical consultation to manufacturers, test laboratories, consumer organizations and products liability attorneys in the areas of product design and hazard identification, age grading, and warning label and instruction manual design. She has evaluated hundreds of products for children, and adults.
“I am honored to participate in this very important dialog on product safety and commend the promotional products industry for meeting this challenge head on,” Carol Pollack-Nelson said. “I am optimistic that PPAI and its members will have a meaningful impact on the development of best practices for the industry and will play an important role in the education and dissemination of promotional product safety knowledge and standards to suppliers, distributors and ultimately buyers to promote the safe use and design of products for consumers of all ages.”
The PPAI Product Safety Summit, chaired once again by Gene Geiger, MAS, CEO of Geiger and Rick Brenner, MAS, CEO of Prime Line, brings together government officials, legal experts and industry professionals for a one-and-a-half day educational forum on the most-pressing product safety issues, their business implications and the challenges associated with compliance. The Summit also examines how to turn the cost-burden of product safety into a strategic advantage.
The PSS is held in conjunction with the PPAI North American Leadership Conference, August 12-14. The Summit will feature two full days of professional networking, roundtable discussion and education sessions. Registration for the conference is now open and details are available here.
For more information, visit www.ppai.org.
