The Consumer Product Safety Commission today unanimously approved a mandatory standard for cribs in an effort to dramatically reduce injuries, entrapments, and deaths that have been the basis for numerous recalls in the past several years involving millions of cribs.
The new rule becomes effective in June 2011, and is structured in two phases. It essentially abolishes the manufacture and sale of drop-side cribs, which have been the subject of recalls due to thousands of incidents blamed on faulty hardware, poor design, or incorrect assembly by caregivers. In June 2010, more than two million drop-side cribs were recalled by seven manufacturers. Hundreds of thousands of other cribs were recalled before and after that recall. Since 2007, 11 million cribs have been recalled. At least 32 infants died from suffocation or strangulation associated with drop-side cribs since 2000.
Cribs affected by the new standards fall into two categories: “full-size” cribs are intended for home use, and “non-full-size” cribs are larger, smaller, portable or shaped differently than a typical crib. Products such as play yards, cradles, and bassinets are not considered “non-full-size”, so they are excluded from the new crib rule. Non-full-size cribs make up about 10% of all crib sales.
In a key amendment to the new rule, the CPSC will give child care centers, family child care homes and places of public accommodation such as hotels an additional two years (December 2012) to replace their inventory of existing cribs with new ones. The agency estimates that 935,000 cribs will need to be replaced by child care centers and hotels at an approximate cost of $467 million. The average cost of replacing cribs per facility is estimated to be in the range of $2,000 to $22,000.
The extension not only gives breathing room to those facilities — so as not to incur an immediate financial burden — but it’s good news for crib manufacturers who will have a predictable revenue stream over the course of two years with minimal design and operational adjustments required.
The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, representing 250 manufacturers in North America, has been a partner with the CPSC to educate parents and caregivers about the potential dangers of drop-side cribs and to provide free immobilization kits to stabilize drop-side cribs. The JPMA has been supportive of the new crib rule as long as its members have sufficient time to get products into the marketplace.
CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum expressed sensitivity regarding the time frame of compliance, but she promised an outreach campaign involving state and local agencies to aggressively spread the word. “Full compliance for every child care center in the United States and its territories will be no easy task, and choosing how best to achieve this goal in a reasonable and timely fashion has not been accomplished with ease,” Tenenbaum said in a statement. “I believe we have struck the right balance to ensure that children will benefit from safer cribs while at the same time working to prevent a crippling impact on smaller entities and a crisis in available child care for working families.”
The CPSC says that 147 fatalities and 1,675 injuries associated with full-size cribs were reported to the agency between November 2007 and April 2010. During the same period, the agency reported 6 fatalities and 28 injuries associated with non-full-size cribs.
Although problems with drop-side cribs have been the focus of the CPSC, the crib industry, and safety advocates, other circumstances have caused injuries or deaths. While 22% of all incidents and 12% of all reported fatalities were associated with full-size drop-side cribs, the majority of incidents were caused by other means: infants falling out of cribs; entrapment of heads or limbs either between the slats or between the mattresses and crib frame; slat breakages; and the presence of pillows or cushions in the sleep area. The CPSC points to “failure or defect in the product itself” as the cause for the vast majority of crib-related incidents.
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