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Government Shutdown: Impact on Product Safety, CPSC & UL Certification

Oct 2, 2013

Quick Answer

During a government shutdown, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) continues its essential operations because it designates "Excepted Employees" to protect against imminent threats to human safety. Additionally, organizations such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and other Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories (NRTLs) are not government agencies and therefore remain fully operational. This ensures that product compliance and certification processes can proceed without interruption, maintaining safety standards despite federal closures.

There are so many things we can talk about regarding the government shutdown, but we’ll keep it in the realm of safety for today.

In case you’re wondering what may happen to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) during this shutdown, they have “Excepted Employees”.  Basically, those employees that are necessary to protect against imminent threats to human safety are exempt from the shutdown.  Here’s the link to the actual CPSC procedure.  See item 10 for Excepted Employees.

It should also be noted UL (Underwriters Laboratories) and all the other NRTLs are not government agencies, so if you have compliance issues, they will all be up and running to help get your products Certified in a timely manner.