Birth Trauma / Medical Malpractice

Consumers will be seeing a new generation of safer cribs for sale at local and national retail stores, with the imposition of stricter standards, according to safety officials. But there was no word on how this will be enforced.

On Dec. 15, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously to approve new mandatory crib standards, establishing the most stringent crib safety standards in the world, the commission said in a recent press release.

Effective in late June, all importers, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers must offer only cribs that meet the CPSC’s new and improved full-size and non-full-size crib standards.

Some of the new mandatory rules for cribs include: (1) stopping the manufacture and sale of dangerous, traditional drop-side cribs; (2) strengthening mattress supports and crib slats; (3) requiring crib hardware to be more durable; and (4) making safety testing more rigorous.

“A safe crib is the safest place for a baby to sleep. It is for this reason that I am so pleased that parents, grandparents and caregivers now can shop with confidence and purchase cribs that meet the most stringent crib standards in the world,” Chairman Inez Tenenbaum said in a prepared statement.

“From the start, our goal has been to prevent deaths and injuries to babies in cribs, and now the day has come where only stronger and safer cribs are available for consumers to purchase.”

Unfortunately, the CPSC didn’t offer any details about how it plans to enforce these more stringent standards.

CPSC has recalled more than 11 million dangerous cribs since 2007.

Drop-side cribs with detaching side rails were associated with at least 32 infant suffocation and strangulation deaths since 2000.

Additional deaths have occurred due to faulty or defective crib hardware. The new standards aim to prevent these tragedies and keep children safer in their cribs.

Starting Dec. 28, 2012, child care facilities, including family child care homes and infant Head Start centers, as well as places of public accommodation, such as hotels and motels, and rental companies must use only cribs that comply with the new crib standards.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) required the CPSC to update the old crib standards, which had not gone through a major revision in more than 30 years, to ensure that the standards provided the highest level of safety possible.