現(xiàn)在寶潔公司表示，由于在歐洲銷售時未出現(xiàn)中毒事件，并未擔心過凝珠上市后的安全問題。寶潔北美監(jiān)管和外部技術(shù)關(guān)系負責(zé)人里克·哈克曼表示，凝珠上市時采用了與所有產(chǎn)品相同嚴格的安全檢驗流程。

然而，寶潔這次多了一個步驟，似乎能看出內(nèi)部有點格外謹慎。在產(chǎn)品上市后，寶潔立刻找辛辛那提藥物和毒物信息中心收集有關(guān)凝珠傷害的數(shù)據(jù)。寶潔公司回答《財富》雜志的問題時稱，外部醫(yī)療顧問小組建議收集數(shù)據(jù)，因為凝珠是新產(chǎn)品。（寶潔還表示，在推出尺寸和形狀相似的洗碗機啫喱球時也采取了類似措施。）

寶潔拒絕透露，委托收集辛辛那提數(shù)據(jù)是否反映出擔心凝珠存在特殊風(fēng)險。但是，丹佛健康的落基山毒物和藥物中心的負責(zé)人、從事消費者安全領(lǐng)域30多年的專家理查德·達特認為此舉不同尋常。“如果美國食品與藥品監(jiān)督管理局對某款處方藥不放心，進入市場的一刻起就會監(jiān)控。”他說。“但在消費品方面，沒聽說過如此密切跟蹤的例子。”

與此同時，凝珠造成傷害案例激增也引發(fā)監(jiān)管關(guān)注。2012年10月，疾病控制和預(yù)防中心向消費者發(fā)出警告，稱“糖果狀”的洗衣凝珠是“公共衛(wèi)生新危害”。2013年3月，消費者產(chǎn)品安全委員會（CPSC）發(fā)布聲明，呼吁行業(yè)自愿行動解決問題。Crowell&Moring的合伙人、委員會前總顧問謝麗爾·法爾維表示，雖然CPSC擁有廣泛的監(jiān)管權(quán)力，包括強制召回或單方面制定產(chǎn)品安全標準，但只有產(chǎn)品存在明顯危險時才會動用。她說，如果并沒有明顯危害，委員更傾向于推動企業(yè)和消費者代言人主動制定標準。盡管制造商負責(zé)最終制造，但必須遵守標準。即使如此，CPSC對凝珠采取行動的呼吁也有些不尋常，法爾維表示此類情況一年最多出現(xiàn)一兩次。

雖然其他制造商也生產(chǎn)洗衣凝珠，但寶潔作為市場領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者，回應(yīng)方面也走在前面。多數(shù)情況下，寶潔的舉動比較認真及時，也很見成效。2012年年中，寶潔已經(jīng)開始在凝珠包裝盒上安裝雙鎖蓋。2013年夏天，寶潔將盒子設(shè)計改為不透明，以安撫認為透明盒子像糖果罐的批評者。不過，中毒人數(shù)還在不斷攀升。2015年2月，參議員迪克·德爾賓（伊利諾伊州）和眾議員杰克·斯貝爾（加州）從聯(lián)邦立法層面施壓，要求制造商“降低包裝對兒童的吸引力”，并減少使用腐蝕性成分。

議員們指出，如果行業(yè)主動采取更有力的行動，將放棄推進法案。2015年9月，由于制造商、行業(yè)游說者和消費者代言人通過了一套新安全規(guī)則，相關(guān)努力終于走出了堅實一步。標準要求凝珠包裝不透明且難以打開，包裝上統(tǒng)一添加警告標示和安全圖標，凝珠還要采用不易破裂且味苦的薄膜。

到2017年，新標準已經(jīng)在全行業(yè)實施。2018年6月，標準委員會再次召開會議，審查受傷人數(shù)并落實進展。他們看到的結(jié)果取決于個人立場，要么令人安心，要么是失敗的安全系統(tǒng)發(fā)出控訴。

P&G says today that it had no unique concerns about the safety of Tide Pods at launch, given the lack of any poisoning crisis in Europe. Rick Hackman, head of North America regulatory and technical external relations at P&G, says that the company applied the same stringent safety process to the pod launch that it does to all its products.

Yet P&G took an additional step that seemed to indicate an unusual degree of caution. Immediately after the launch, the company enlisted the Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center to collect data on exposures. In response to questions from Fortune, P&G says that a panel of external medical advisers recommended the data collection because the product was new to the market. (P&G also says the company took similar action when it introduced dishwasher packets, which are similar in size and shape.)

P&G declines to say whether the commissioning of the Cincinnati data collection reflected concerns that the product was uniquely risky. But Richard Dart, head of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center at Denver Health and an expert in the field of consumer safety for over 30 years, describes this as highly unusual. With “prescription drugs, if the FDA has concerns, they will require monitoring right from the minute it enters the market,” he says. “But for consumer products, especially, I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of one that did this.”

In regulatory circles, meanwhile, the surge of pod injuries was dramatic enough to draw attention. In October 2012 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning to consumers that laundry pods, which had a “candy-like appearance,” were “an emerging public health hazard.” In March 2013 the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a statement calling on the industry to take voluntary action to address the hazard. While the CPSC has wide regulatory powers, including the ability to force a mandatory recall or unilaterally develop safety standards for a product, it uses these levers only in rare instances when a product is patently dangerous, says Cheryl Falvey, a partner at Crowell & Moring and former general counsel at the commission. Otherwise, she says, the commission prefers to nudge businesses and consumer advocates to come up with voluntary standards, which, despite their name, manufacturers are required to follow. And even in that context, the CPSC’s call for action on pods was relatively unusual—something that Falvey says happens only once or twice a year at most.

While other manufacturers also make laundry pods, P&G as the market leader took the lead role in responding—and by most accounts, the company’s actions were serious, urgent, and diligent. By mid-2012 it had already begun installing double-latch lids on the tubs containing its pods. And by the summer of 2013, P&G had changed the tubs’ design to be opaque, placating critics who felt the clear tub resembled a candy jar. Still, the number of poisonings kept climbing. In February 2015, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) introduced federal legislation that would have forced manufacturers to make the design of packets “l(fā)ess attractive to children” and use less caustic ingredients.

The legislators noted that they would drop the bill if the industry took stronger action on its own. In September 2015 that effort took concrete form as manufacturers, industry lobbyists, and consumer advocates approved a new set of safety rules. The standards required that pods have opaque, difficult-to-open packaging; standardized warning labels and safety icons on packages; and burst-resistant, bitter-tasting outer film.

By 2017 the new standards had been implemented across the industry. And in June 2018 the standards committee met again to review injury numbers and determine their progress. The results they saw, depending on one’s point of view, were either a reassuring sign or an indictment of a failed safety system.

相關(guān)研究主要判斷行業(yè)安全干預(yù)措施對6歲以下兒童的影響，對比了新措施實施前12個月的時間（2012年7月至2013年6月）與干預(yù)后12個月（2017年）。報告引用尼爾森數(shù)據(jù)顯示，這段時間內(nèi)凝珠銷量翻了一番，從21億個增加到47億個。結(jié)果是，傷害案例占凝珠總銷量比例降了53%；涉及去醫(yī)院就醫(yī)的傷害案例與銷量的比例下降了63%；涉及重大醫(yī)療傷害或死亡的案例與銷量的比例下降了86%。

在行業(yè)看來，這些數(shù)據(jù)都標志著取得進展。但在另一邊的消費者代言人眼里，只看玻璃杯空著的一半，雖然按市場規(guī)模算傷害率下降，看絕對數(shù)字的話的傷害案例（根據(jù)人口增長調(diào)整后）幾乎沒有變化。調(diào)查期間每年前往急診科就診的人數(shù)僅略有下降，從4300人降至4200人，而傷害案例總數(shù)實際上略有增加，從10229人增至10776人。（根據(jù)AAPCC初步估算數(shù)據(jù)，2018年的傷害案例降至9440起，但如果充分分析數(shù)字，結(jié)果可能會略有上升。）涉及去醫(yī)院治療的傷害比例（傷害嚴重程度的衡量指標）略有下降，從42%降至33%。

正如美國消費者聯(lián)合會的立法主任兼法律總顧問雷切爾·韋特勞布指出，報告“為雙方提供了數(shù)據(jù)，一方用來證明工作進展良好，另一方則認為還有很多工作要做。”寶潔就引用數(shù)據(jù)當成行業(yè)采取干預(yù)措施成功的證據(jù)。“只要事故率持續(xù)降低，即使（毒物控制中心）接到電話的數(shù)量增加，我們也會認為出現(xiàn)進步，因為用凝珠洗衣服的方式是新的，人們正逐漸學(xué)習(xí)使用。” 寶潔公關(guān)團隊的達蒙·瓊斯和佩特拉·倫克在電子郵件里告訴《財富》雜志。

與此同時，消費者權(quán)益代表認為行業(yè)設(shè)定的門檻過低。全國兒童醫(yī)院的傷害專家加里·史密斯表示，根據(jù)市場規(guī)模判斷進展不夠全面，史密斯參與了標準制定過程。史密斯說，150年來流行病學(xué)家一直使用絕對病例數(shù)或與病例數(shù)與高風(fēng)險人群對比情況衡量公共衛(wèi)生負擔。“如果現(xiàn)在討論的是齊卡病毒，腦病的病例數(shù)持續(xù)上升，但每個蚊子種群導(dǎo)致病例的數(shù)量下降，我們并不會因為比例下降高興。”

標準制定團隊計劃于2019年年中再次會面，再一次審查進度。雙方都希望看到進一步改善，但無法確定。丹佛毒物控制專家理查德·達特指出，傷害案例減少的速度已開始放緩。“希望傷害事件減少，這就是我們整體看待公共衛(wèi)生措施的方式。”韋特勞布表示。

The studies measured the impact of the industry’s safety intervention on children under 6, comparing a 12-month period before the new measures went into effect (July 2012 to June 2013) to a 12-month period after the intervention (calendar year 2017). During that time span, the number of pods sold more than doubled, from 2.1 billion to 4.7 billion, according to Nielsen data used in the reports. The upshot: The ratio of exposures to total pods sold dropped 53%; the ratio of exposures involving health care facility treatment to sales dropped 63%; and the ratio of exposures involving major medical injuries or death to sales dropped 86%.

For the industry, these were an important sign of progress. But consumer advocates at the same table saw a glass half-empty—because while injury rates, measured by market size, were down, injuries as measured by absolute numbers (and when adjusted for population growth) barely budged. Annual emergency-?department visits dropped only slightly over that span, from 4,300 to 4,200, while total exposures actually rose slightly, from 10,229 to 10,776. (Exposures dropped to 9,440 in 2018, according to preliminary AAPCC data, but those numbers are likely to rise slightly once the data has been fully analyzed.) And the share of total exposures involving health care facility treatment—a measure of injury severity—dipped slightly, from 42% to 33%.

As Rachel Weintraub, legislative director and general counsel for the Consumer Federation of America, notes, the reports “gave both sides data, to pursue either their views that it was working very well, or views that more needed to be done.” Today, P&G cites this data as evidence that the industry’s approach is successful. “As long as we continue to see reduction in incident rates, even if the number of [poison-control] calls increased, we would think of it as progress, as the form is new and people are learning how to use it,” Damon Jones and Petra Renck of the P&G communications team told Fortune in an email.

Consumer advocates, meanwhile, argue that the industry is setting the bar too low. Measuring progress relative to market size is an incomplete measure of success, says Gary Smith, the injury expert at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, who has been part of the standards process. For 150 years, epidemiologists have used the absolute number of cases, or the number of cases relative to the population at risk, to measure public health burden, Smith says. “If this were Zika virus, and the number of cases of encephalopathy were still going up, but the number of cases per mosquito population were going down, we would take no comfort in that latter number.”

The standards group plans to meet again in mid-2019 for another progress review. Both sides hope to see further improvement, but that’s uncertain. Richard Dart, the Denver poison-control expert, notes that the decline in exposures has already started to slow. “We’d like the number of incidents to go down, and that’s how we look at public health measures across the board,” says Weintraub.