ZRecs_Safety is a frightening-looking Twitter user who offers links, commentary, and insights on the state of child safety in the U.S. Our goal in providing this service is to keep parents abreast of the most relevant standouts in a sea of product safety information it would be difficult for anyone to monitor independently, and most of which never gets covered elsewhere. (The avatar is a nod to Magnetix, one of the most flagrantly dangerous toys recalled in the last several years.) In addition to offering an unfiltered and immediate feed of child-related recalls from the CPSC - with direct links to every recall or advisory announcement as they are published by the Commission - we monitor recalls and notices from the Food and Drug Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Canadian and European Union regulatory agencies. We don't publish all of these, and that's what makes this free service so exceptional (if we do say so ourselves).

We alert subscribers and followers to car seat recalls by the NHTSA and child-related FDA recalls and notices in the U.S., but as for the international scene, we canvas these recall notifications and identify products that are either available in the U.S. or represent a hazard found here. Whenever we find a relevant match, we publish the international recall information and point out the U.S. availability or related issue.

We also follow child safety news and tweet out interesting news articles, highlighting great reporting and finds from other blogs. With rare exception, these are items that never make it into full-fledged ZRecs posts. So if you're only getting child safety information from us through Z Recommends, you're only getting half the story!

Here are a few examples of items you could find in the ZRecs_Safety feed, which you can follow on Twitter or subscribe to in your favorite feed reader.

Did you know Canadian authorities have recommended installing certain car seats from Cosco, Safety 1st, and Eddie Bauer the "wrong" way to counteract a defect in the car seat? [Link]



Or that the EU has banned many pacifiers as choking hazards for a requirement that the U.S. either lacks or won't enforce? Never did get a response from the CPSC on that one. [Link]


Or that infant self-feeding devices are banned completely in Canada? Not so in the U.S. [Link]:


We also highlight unusual recalls that might offer guidance to manufacturers, importers, and consumers trying to stay abreast of potentially hazardous types of children's items.


If you'd like us to delve into any ZRecs_Safety topics in post form, let us know and we'll consider it - most ZRecs_Safety tweets are the tip of a good-sized iceberg.

(Here's a link to the tweet shown at the top of this post, where you can click through to either of the linked sources.)

Over the longer term, we'll judge this free service's success, and the wisdom of our time spent on it, by the Twitter followership it has attracted. (We can't track its RSS subscription levels.) So if you're on Twitter and think this sounds like information you'd like to get your hands on, why not follow ZRecs_Safety today?