Anecdotal in the sense that there were reports of breakers not tripping at the rated over current.
Reliance Electric (purchased FPE after the bad breakers were made) actually reported this themselves.
What I haven't heard is that there was an investigation of where that breaker was made and if there was a bad manufacturing process, quality control process etc or whether the design was flawed. In Canada these breakers do not carry the stigma. That is why I think it may be a manufacturing flaw and may not have lasted that long. I agree there has been a huge lack of transparency around the issue. Federal may have known there was a bad batch of breakers and they could not establish good parameters of how long they were being made badly so they stonewalled the issue.
I do believe the ones submitted to U/L did meet the criteria but somewhere along the line they made a bunch that didn't. I don't even think we can blame China for this one.
CPSC actually backed off after a while.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced today that it is closing its two year investigation into Federal Pacific Electric Stab-lok type residential circuit breakers. This action was taken because the data currently available to the Commission does not establish that the circuit breakers pose a serious risk of injury to consumers
At this point the bad breakers are almost 40 years old so simply getting rid of them is not an unreasonable way to go.
Connecticut Electric does make a replacement but that would depend on how you feel about "classified" breakers.
Panel replacement is probably the safest option but it might be a hard sell if the user is not adding capacity or feeling imminent fear.
