Personal Injury Law

Nursery Products Injure 66,000 kids

By Jane Akre

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says look out for nursery equipment.  

Cribs, high chairs, child walkers were involve in more than 66,000 injuries in 2006, a marked increase from the year before.

The injuries largely came from falls the commission says with 42 percent of injuries involving head injuries.

In a report issued today, the CPSC says that there were some 6,600 more injuries to infants and children under the age of five than in 2005. 

CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese says the agency doesn't know why the spike in injuries after what appeared to be an improving picture.  The numbers are gathered from children treated in hospital emergency rooms.

From 2002 to 2004 there were 97 crib deaths, one-third attributed to entrapment between railings and a mattress through which the child falls and suffocates.

Even 55 complaints, seven entrapments and three deaths weren't enough to spark a recall of Simplicity cribs until the eve of Maurice Possley of the Chicago Tribune's expose when the CPSC issued a recall of one million Simplicity Cribs.

Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, a children's safety advocacy group, many of those dangerous cribs are still out in the marketplace.

CPSC shipped 45,000 crib repair kits for Simplicity cribs even though a million were recalled.

Cowles believes real injury figures are likely higher because many scrapes and bruises don't necessitate a trip to the emergency room or hospital so won't be counted in statistics.

2007 numbers are not included but that was the year for a record number of product recalls, many faulty products coming from China. Lead based paints initiated many of the recalls.

Congress is considering sweeping changes to the CPSC, the first in a generation.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act of 2007 or Senate Bill 2045, introduced by Sen.. Mark Pryor of Arkansas was updated this week and may soon come to the Senate floor for debate.  

The agency operates on a shoe-string with fewer personnel than in previous decades. At the same time imports from third world countries have flooded the market. 

The CPSC works with manufacturers to develop voluntary standards or in a few cases issues recalls over more than 15,000 consumer products from backyard barbeques to Barbies, anything that consumers purchase and use.  #

Full post as published by InjuryBoard on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).