COLLEGE
PARK – Parents of young athletes need to be warned that some sports equipment
manufacturers are trying to capitalize on concussion fears with claims that
their gear can prevent head injuries, the director of the Center for Brain,
Biology and Behavior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said during a recent
interview.
The
Federal Trade Commission has been cracking down on false claims made in
mouthguard ads for the past few years. The FTC reached a settlement in August
2012 with Brain-Pad Inc., and its president Joseph Manzo, prohibiting the
company from claiming that its mouthguards can reduce risk of concussions. At
the time, Brain-Pad’s website stated that they could.
Brain-Pad’s
website now makes no such claim.
That
November, the FTC sent warning letters to 18 sports equipment manufacturers whose product lines included
mouthguards, ordering them to reword their product descriptions, according to
Betsy Lordan of the Office of Public Affairs.
But
now, Molfese said, companies are claiming that a “rubber band” that goes around
the heads of soccer players prevents concussions. “There is no data for this
claim,” he said.
Brain-Pad
touts the impact-absorbing qualities of its protective headband on its website.
Brain-Pad,
for instance, says on its website that its headband “reduces impact energy up
to 50 percent” without demonstrating where the information was gathered. While
the website doesn’t use the word “concussion,” the phrasing used can be
misleading, Molfese said.
“We’re
all concerned about fraud,” Molfese said. “Parents say, ‘My kid has a headband,
why can’t they go back to play?’ And that’s because there is no fully
preventative measure.”
When
asked if Brain-Pad’s wording could be construed as deceptively advertising
concussion prevention, Lordan declined to comment, stating the FTC doesn’t
speak about individual companies unless announcing a complaint or order
violation.
Manzo,
meanwhile, was clear in delineating that his products don’t make any concussion
claims. “Brain-Pad claims that its products are proven to reduce impact forces
to the base of the skull; we say nothing about concussions. No one knows
anything about concussions,” he said in a recent interview.
When asked if he thought the phrasing used on his site could be confusing to
consumers that the headband reduces concussions, Manzo replied, “I don’t know.
… I just know they’ll think it reduces impact forces.”
Molfese
recently collaborated on a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences
entitled, “Sports-Related Concussions in Youth: Improving the Science, Changing
the Culture,” which discusses false marketing and deceptive language being used
to take advantage of growing concussion awareness. Molfese says companies are
using the growing notoriety of concussions to make a profit on their products
that don’t actually help.
“We
get 10 to 15 calls a week from parents asking about mouthguards and headbands
and how they can help with their kid’s concussion,” says Molfese. “And that’s
the danger.”
Originally published: http://cnsmaryland.org/2014/05/19/researcher-warns-soccer-headbands-mouthguards-dont-prevent-concussions/
Originally published: http://cnsmaryland.org/2014/05/19/researcher-warns-soccer-headbands-mouthguards-dont-prevent-concussions/
No comments:
Post a Comment