Public Safety
By Dave Kettner

The term ‘public safety' is typically referring to one of two major classifications: emergency or consumer protection services and lists of measures to protect even the most ignorant or stupid people from being hurt in a given situation or environment. I'm not kidding. There are tons of sub classifications under the first type of public safety. There are police, ambulance and fire numbers and services we can notify and utilize to help ourselves or others needing assistance.

The truth is that most public measures lie somewhere between to two distinctions mentioned above. For example, consumer has many legitimate organizations that have done much to pass laws protecting consumers from shady or unsafe businesses and products. At the same time some of the laws or regulations that these consumer protection organizations have helped to create have brought about the inane messages found on all kinds of products.

Some

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Children can strangle on the cords.
LELE Recalls Children's Hooded Sweatshirts
Drawstring is a strangulation hazard.
Salmonella Found in a Widely-Used Processed Food Ingredient
HVP used in soups, sauces, chilis, stews, hot dogs, snack foods and other processed foods.
Nissan Recalls More Than 500,000 Vehicles
Fuel gauge problem, source of many complaints, being addressed.


safety messages on products border on being offensive in the way they state very obvious things, such as not spraying chemicals directly into your eyes. While these messages may seem stupid to us, there are many reasons that even the most obvious public measures are stated. For one, perhaps the person using the product has never used anything like it before. Perhaps he or she does not speak English or does not read very well. This makes overly simplistic messages necessary to be sure that the greatest numbers of people possible understand the potential dangers of using a given product incorrectly.

Public also includes all kinds of public offices for everything from animal control to inspectors of structures and utilities as well as public health inspectors and any type of civil interest group. Some countries have public branches to their governing bodies, such as the Committee of Public in the French government.

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