Safety, safety, safety. Gone are the times of snake-oil peddlers and drugged-up baby food. Gone too are the broken strollers, choking hazards, and lead paint. The Consumer Product Safety Commision (CPSC), the foremost federal regulatory agency, has stepped in to ensure the sellers don’t lie and the buyers don’t die. Since its inception in 1972, the CPSC has recalled thousands of faulty products, ranging from gas grills to ATVs. Unfortunately, this consumer protection crusade has coincided with deadlock and bureaucratic headbanging. It’s been difficult for new entrepreneurs to create products without breaking dozens of laws. But thanks to the CPSC’s advanced Regulatory Robot tool, fledgling entrepreneurs can see what regulations apply to their product with just a few clicks on a keyboard. Here, step-by-step, you can see just how easy it is to keep your product safe and lawful.

To start using the Regulatory Robot, go to https://business.cpsc.gov/robot/ or go to https://cpsc.gov/ and click on Regulatory Robot. Once you are there, this screen should appear:

If you have multiple products, remember that each Regulatory Robot search report is for a single product. That is why titling your report is valuable: it distinguishes between them. As for the terms and conditions, hooray! No huge blocks of legal mumbo-jumbo, just eight little sentences. Click “agree” and continue. 

This speaks for itself: click on the market sector that best represents your product (the green question marks specify what products fit best in each sector). The search tool is a little finicky, so input clear one-word queries for best results. For the purpose of this demonstration, I will select the “miscellaneous” section.

The important thing to acknowledge here is that not all products are under CPSC jurisdiction. Visit https://www.cpsc.gov/Regulations-Laws–Standards/Products-Outside-CPSCs-Jurisdiction/ to see what products are regulated by other agencies. Regulatory Robot will still give you information on your product, even if the CPSC is not responsible for it. For demonstration, I will select “drywall.”

There you have it! In a few mere clicks, you are able to open a veritable genie bottle of regulatory policies and information. Scroll down to the bottom and download your report so it is permanently saved. Finally, the government has used tax money on something we all can get behind.