CPSC
From PyroGuide
"CPSC" or Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. One of which is consumer fireworks or 1.4G classified.
Never accused of being firework fans with their yearly display of burning child mannequins and M80 stuffed exploding watermelons. Some believe the CPSC is trying to shut down all legal consumer fireworks along with pyrotechnic chemical vendors with a complete disregard for the fireworks clubs, hobbyists and amateur rocketry. Supposedly to stop the vendors from selling the components specific to M80's, instead they restricted common items such as visco fuse and Potassium nitrate and other oxidizers.
The approach taken by the fireworks industry, which has focused on education and stringent product testing within China. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, standards for Chinese-made fireworks were so low that as many as 75% failed US safety tests. To tackle the problem, US importers were encouraged to pay for a testing operation set up in China - the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory (AFSL) - to monitor production straight from the assembly line. At least three-quarters of US fireworks importers are signed up to the scheme and the lab has about 50 technicians in China.
Since 1994, injury rates among US consumers have dropped by more than two-thirds and sales of fireworks have increased greatly. About 99% of the fireworks used in the US come from China. Initially Chinese factories weren't happy about the AFSL's checks but, as Chinese-language guidelines were produced to help them meet US requirements, attitudes changed. The manufacturers now understand that safer, better quality fireworks translates into bigger sales.
