As parents, it's extremely difficult to ensure that we're gathering the most accurate, up-to-the-minute information on the safety of the products we bring into our homes each day.  Indeed, the number of product recalls that seem to occur on a daily basis is mind-boggling, and it could definitely drive a person bonkers trying to keep up with all of it.  So when my friend Jennifer Toney told me about her company WeMakeItSafer.com, I knew I just had to share this incredible resource with the Macaroni Kid community.

WeMakeItSafer helps consumers identify recalled products in their homes via a proprietary technology called "Items I Own."  Launched this spring, "Items I Own" is a free service that checks your belongings against the thousands of recalls that have been announced over the past ten years, and then continues monitoring your items daily for any future problems or recalls.  WeMakeItSafer provides similar services to online sellers and marketplaces through its "Simply Check" program.  There's even a Recall Gallery, which lets you browse through recalled products organized by product category.

What makes WeMakeItSafer so invaluable?  Well, you probably didn't know (I certainly didn't) that, of the nearly 600 million unsafe products (individual units) the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has recalled over the last 10 years, approximately 80% have never been returned or fixed.  That means these products, all with known, substantial safety hazards, are still in use in homes and childcare facilities across the country.  Scary stuff indeed.  And even scarier when you consider the fact that WeMakeItSafer estimates that 300,000 injuries and deaths have been caused by recalled products after they were recalled, most often because the product owners did not know about the recalls. 

WeMakeItSafer is truly unique in its capabilities and services.  If you wanted to try to search for recalled products without "Items I Own," or "Simply Check," the only other viable tool available is the CPSC website, which requires you to check each product one-by-one against text-based recall lists.  You'd then have to periodically repeat this process to check for new recalls.  WeMakeItSafer eliminates this headache.  And the company is already seeing great results.  Since launching this spring, WeMakeItSafer users have checked nearly 400,000 products for recalls and are conducting over 5,000 product searches each day.  That means, statistically, with the help of WeMakeItSafer's community of users, the company has been able to prevent approximately 200 recalled product- related injuries and deaths in just a few months.