The American Home Furnishing Alliance kicked off its Compliance Summit this week with an opening day featuring eight compelling sessions capped by a keynote from Peter Feldman, a commissioner with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Feldman, who spoke at a similar AHFA event in 2019, began his comments by saying, “So much has changed, not only in the world generally, but with the commission in terms of our membership, authority and direction.”

But one thing that hasn’t changed, he said, “is AHFA’s ongoing commitment to safety and engagement with the CPSC.”
Feldman also thanked the AHFA and the furniture industry for “the reality check on the costs, benefits and technical feasibility of the rules our agency might pursue.”
Referring to the STURDY Act, Feldman then gave the audience an update on the commission’s efforts to improve furniture safety and protect children from potential injury due to furniture tip-overs.
“Collectively, we’ve made significant progress, and it is something we can all be proud of,” Feldman said, adding, “But it is also a case study in what we can do when government, industry, consumer advocates and other stakeholders work together. “
Calling that legislation a “huge accomplishment,” Feldman said the mandate also levels the playing field for AHFA members who he said were forced to compete against some unscrupulous overseas producers who took “unfair advantage by skirting mandatory safety requirements.
“Robust enforcement of our safety standards not only helps consumers, but it also benefits compliant businesses by ensuring fair play, and that’s a large part of our mission and why we’re here,” Feldman said.
Feldman also discussed the CPSC’s Business Product Safety Complaint portal, which went online last month. This portal, launched in June, is intended to harness market forces and private sector knowledge to improve consumer safety by providing manufacturers, importers and other market participants an opportunity to alert the commission directly about dangerous or in-violation products more easily.
“Businesses often find out about these unsafe products far before the commission does, and until now, they just haven’t had a convenient mechanism to share that information with us,” Feldman said.
“I also want to talk about e-commerce and the commission’s activities in that area. I have maintained for some time that the commission needs to rethink its market surveillance capabilities concerning e-commerce and new and emerging distribution models,” Feldman said.
According to the commissioner, in 2022, e-commerce sales in the United States totaled more than $1 trillion, representing an 8% increase over the prior year, which is why the CPSC set an e-safe team within the Office of Compliance and Field Operations to monitor online marketplaces for banned or recalled product listings including products that are regulated under the STURDY Act.
“I want to be clear. These sales are illegal. It’s against the law to sell banned or recalled products whether you got it new or used,” Feldman said, adding that last year, the CPSC secured the removal of more than 60,000 units of those products from various websites.
Feldman also told the group of both his and the CPSC’s focus of “strengthening our posture at America’s ports and strengthening the posture of our port inspectors, who are our front-line workers accessing, screening and interdicting dangerous goods entering the United States before they ever make it into consumer hands.”
Maintaining that, “Since these shipments originate in countries that don’t always respect our laws, such as China, every seizure of a dangerous product represents a commensurate reduction in the risk of illness, injury or death.
“To put it simply, our port inspectors are a critical part of our mission. They save American lives. And I’ve moved to reinforce our field teams, expanding the number of inspectors by almost 65% over the past three years,” Feldman said.
The commissioner also told the group that, “Just last month, the commission unveiled a new import shipping tracking tool that allows importers and shippers to better track the status of their shipments in real time.”
In particular, he mentioned the CPSC’s new e-filing requirements for importers and while admitting the new system will require a learning curve for the furniture industry, Feldman assured the group that it doesn’t create new obligations.
Looking to the future, Feldman said his goal is to keep the agency focused on its core safety mission, which is protecting Americans from the unreasonable risk of injury and death from the products they use every day.
“We will continue to make every effort to make sure we are not simply coming up with a solution to a problem but are coming up with the right solution. We’ve got a lot of smart people at the CPSC, but we certainly don’t have all the answers. We rely on the expertise of others, including all of you, and I very much look forward to our continued partnership to safeguard America,” Feldman concluded.

Before Feldman’s keynote, the Summit, held at the Guilford Technical Community College Conference Center in Colfax, North Carolina, featured a full day of sessions that began when Christopher Kleine, vice president of logistics for Magnussen Home, shared a real-life STURDY compliance audit the company had with CPSC personnel.
Kleine shared that Magnussen got a call from the CPSC at 2 p.m. one day letting him know they would be there the next day at 10 a.m. to conduct the audit.
Thinking he was “being punked,” Kleine said he immediately called the AHFA to confirm that the call was real. After confirming that the call was legitimate, Kleine began pulling all the information the CPSC was looking for, including confirmation that each SKU being looked at was compliant.
“We were fortunate in that our records were in order, but we had one surprise when they wanted one specific set of paperwork, and we had to tell them that the factory that had the paperwork was closed for a holiday. Luckily, we had a copy and were able to provide them with what they needed,” Kleine said, adding,

“But be ready, have your documents in order because if you don’t, you may not have a big window to pull them together once they come to audit you.”
The session also featured Matt Howsare, chair of Cooley’s North American product safety practice and a leading global consumer product safety and compliance lawyer. He shared practical tips on how companies can prepare for a CPSC audit and also told the group that most CPSC audits don’t go as smoothly as Magnussen’s.
The next session — Risk Assessment Gone Awry? — featured Sam Boxerman, partner with Sidley Austin LLP, and Elliot Sigal, vice president/senior toxicologist with Intrinskik.
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a draft risk evaluation for formaldehyde finding that its use in composite wood products is a risk to human health.
Boxerman explained how he, using AHFA data, was able to show the EPA that wood furniture used in residential settings does not pose an unreasonable risk.
He went on to outline the next steps, including meeting with the EPA, seeking legislative and political support, preparing for a potential risk-management phase and preparing for potential litigation.
Sigal said that he and his group found that the EPA risk evaluation had inconsistencies. “The EPA, when looking at formaldehyde, lumped residential furniture with tablecloths, plastics, foam insulation and cleaning products. That made for confusing, and in some cases, misleading conclusions, and our position is that furniture needs to be looked at separately in terms of risk evaluation.”
Formaldehyde was also front and center at the next session titled “An IRIS No One Wants to See Bloom,” featuring Judah Prero, counsel for Washington, D.C.-based law firm Arnold & Porter.

Prero told the group that the use of formaldehyde is under threat because of a 2022 draft assessment by the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).
As the former assistant general counsel for the American Chemistry Council, Prero explained the IRIS process and why the ACC is challenging the IRIS formaldehyde assessment.
“For openers, IRIS was never authorized by Congress so there is no law that says the EPA has to look at formaldehyde this way,” Prero said, adding, “Formaldehyde is a natural occurrence and an essential chemical building block.”
At the heart of the matter, according to Prero, is the fact that the EPA has ignored 72 key studies that refute its position on formaldehyde. “Despite criticism by the scientific community for its deficiencies regarding formaldehyde, the EPA continues to defer to IRIS,” he said.
To make that point, the ACC sued the EPA under Section 15 of the Federal Advisory Act arguing that the EPA failed to look at all the best available information that refuted the EPA’s stance on formaldehyde.

Acknowledging that the court dismissed the case, Prero maintained that the EPA nonetheless based its determination on formaldehyde on information that is not yet finalized.
Other opening day sessions included an update from Travis Snapp, president of Benchmark International, who told the group that on March 22 of this year the laminated product exemption under the EPA’s TSCA Title VI had officially expired and what that meant to the industry.
Amy Lally, a partner with law firm Sidley LLP, who also helped the AHFA negotiate the parameters for the “safe harbor” warnings specifically established for the furniture industry, gave the group an update on Proposition 65.
Proposition 65, officially known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, was enacted as a ballot initiative in November 1986. The proposition protects the state’s drinking water sources from being contaminated with chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, and requires businesses to inform Californians about exposures to such chemicals.
Proposition 65 requires the state to maintain and update a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity.

The furniture safe harbor is unique among all Prop 65 warnings for three reasons.
First, it stipulates that a separate Prop 65 label is not required on residential furniture. Instead, manufacturers may include the Prop 65 warning on an existing product label, such as the manufacturing label for wood products or the flammability label for upholstered products.
Second, the furniture safe harbor requires retail sellers to share the responsibility of alerting consumers to the presence of chemicals in furniture products.
Finally, the furniture safe harbor label needs to name one specific chemical that is listed by OEHHA as a carcinogen or a reproductive toxicant, not two, as on other labels.
Lally told the group that the high pace of Notice of Violations continues to spike. In 2018, there were under 2,500 NOVs, but by 2023, that number jumped to over 4,000, and this year, the number of NOVs will be even higher,” Lally warned.
Other opening day sessions included New Challenges for Companies With Wood-Fired Boilers, Changes Coming to ASTM F3096, Lacey Act Phase VII-What You Need to Know and GCCs What You Need To Know Now … And Changes for Importers in 2025.
Day two included presentations from Bill Perdue, AHFA vice president, regulatory affairs and Bill Simmons, managing director Dutko Government Relations on Why Utah Pushed Pause on Online Law Labels; Heather Stapleton, Ph.D, at Duke University, who addressed PFAS in Textiles: Knowns, Unknowns & Relevance to Human Exposure; Martha Marrapese, a partner in Wiley Rein LLP, with a Primer on EPA’s New PFAS Reporting Rule and Pratik Ichhaporia, vice president, technical services Eurofins Modern Testing Services and Travis Snapp, president and founder of Benchmark International, who offered an Update on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Later in afternoon Thursday, the summit featured a panel discussion on ASTM Standard for PFAS Testing by Rock Vitale, founder and technical director of chemistry and senior principal of Environmental Standards Inc., Michael Deible, Ph.D and consulting scientist at R J Lee Group and Dominika Gruzzecka, market manager, food and consumer products at Shimadzu Scientific Instruments and a presentation by Noelle E. Wooten, a shareholder in Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz on PFAS – What the Future Holds.