Congress continues to take aim at manufacturers for making false safety claims about concussions. Today, they moved one step closer to eliminating such claims and ensuring all athletes and parents are not mislead by junk science. Here’s the full press release from the Senators’ offices:<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Today,\u00a0U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.)<\/strong>,\u00a0Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)\u00a0<\/strong>welcomed passage of their bill in the Senate Commerce Committee aimed at protecting young athletes from the dangers of sports-related traumatic brain injuries. The senators, all members of the committee, introduced the Youth Sports Concussion Act earlier this year to help ensure that safety standards for sports equipment, including football helmets, are based on the latest science and curb false advertising claims made by manufacturers to increase protective sports gear sales.<\/p>\n “Today’s Commerce Committee passage of our Youth Sports Concussion Act marks an important step toward cracking down on misleading claims and ensuring New Mexico kids can have fun and play sports safely,”\u00a0Udall said.\u00a0<\/strong>“Sports are an important part of staying active and learning the value of teamwork for many kids. Parents and coaches want to do everything they can to keep their kids safe on the field or the court, and they deserve to have the facts needed to make knowledgable safety decisions. Our bill would help stop companies that take advantage of parents and athletes’ concerns about concussions and falsely market products as ‘safety’ equipment, despite little evidence that the products protect players.”<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing\u2019s certain about Minnesotans \u2013 we love our sports. But whether it’s football, hockey, or the many other sports we play and love, parents, coaches, and young athletes must be equipped with the facts and informed of the risks when making safety decisions,\u201d\u00a0Klobuchar said.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cToday\u2019s Commerce Committee passage of our bill will protect our athletes and help make sure they can continue to compete on and off the field safely.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am proud that the Senate Commerce Committee voted to advance the Youth Sports Concussions Act,\u201d\u00a0Blumenthal said.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cWe know all too well that the dangers of head injuries are real. As the science around prevention develops, this important bill will ensure our federal agencies can crack down on athletic equipment manufacturers that peddle quackery. No company should be able to use deceptive claims to exploit parents\u2019 natural instincts to protect their children. Our youngest athletes \u2014 our future sports heroes \u2014 deserve accurate information to make informed decisions so that the sports they play today can be sports they play for a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n Udall, Klobuchar and Blumenthal introduced the Youth Sports Concussion Act ahead of Super Bowl 50, amid discussion among doctors, players, researchers and others about the need to protect players \u2014 especially young athletes \u2014 from experiencing debilitating head injuries. Athletes suffer up to 3.8 million concussions every year, and sports are the second-leading cause of traumatic brain injuries among youth ages 15-24.<\/p>\n An extensive\u00a0National Academy of Sciences report<\/a>\u00a0previously found a lack of scientific evidence that helmets and other protective devices designed for young athletes reduce concussion risk \u2014 yet some manufacturers continue to use false advertising claims that prevent athletes, parents and coaches from making informed safety decisions.<\/p>\n In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned nearly 20 sports equipment manufacturers that they might be making deceptive concussion prevention claims, \u00a0but the FTC’s actions thus far have not deterred companies from making these claims. The Youth Sports Concussion Act would empower the FTC to seek civil penalties in such cases.<\/p>\n Udall has led efforts in Congress to improve equipment safety standards and curb false advertising claims, focusing on ensuring parents, coaches and players have the information they need to make important decisions about how to prevent head injuries. A previous version of the Youth Sports Concussion Act\u00a0passed the Senate Commerce Committee in April 2014<\/a>. Last year, Udall and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.)\u00a0called on the FTC to investigate potentially misleading safety claims used to sell soccer headgear<\/a>. Udall also worked to include\u00a0several concussion prevention provisions<\/a>\u00a0in December\u2019s appropriations bill.<\/p>\n Many sports, medical and consumer organizations have supported the Youth Sports Concussion Act, including:<\/p>\n American Academy of Neurology<\/p>\n American Academy of Pediatrics<\/p>\n Brain Injury Association of America<\/p>\n Brain Trauma Foundation<\/p>\n Cleveland Clinic<\/p>\n Consumer Federation of America<\/p>\n Consumers Union<\/p>\n Major League Baseball<\/p>\n Major League Baseball Players Association<\/p>\n Major League Soccer<\/p>\n Major League Soccer Players Union<\/p>\n National Association of State Head Injury Administrators<\/p>\n National Athletic Trainers’ Association<\/p>\n National Basketball Association<\/p>\n National Collegiate Athletic Association<\/p>\n National Consumers League<\/p>\n National Federation of State High School Associations<\/p>\n National Football League<\/p>\n National Football League Players Association<\/p>\n National Hockey League<\/p>\n National Hockey League Players\u2019 Association<\/p>\n National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association<\/p>\n National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment<\/p>\n Safe Kids Worldwide<\/p>\n United States Brain Injury Alliance<\/p>\n US Lacrosse<\/p>\n US Soccer Federation<\/p>\n USA Hockey<\/p>\n Xenith<\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n Contacts:\u00a0<\/strong>Jennifer Talhelm (Udall) 202.228.6870 \/ Colin Milligan (Klobuchar) 202.228.6317 \/ Kayla Johnson (Blumenthal)\u00a0202.224.0335<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Congress continues to take aim at manufacturers for making false safety claims about concussions. Today, they moved one step closer to eliminating such claims and ensuring all athletes and parents are not mislead by junk science. Here’s the full press release from the Senators’ offices: WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0Today,\u00a0U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.),\u00a0Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)\u00a0and\u00a0Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)\u00a0welcomed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[517,29,511,510,246,514,518,515,520,44,366,509,516,519,512,513],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1869,"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions\/1869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}