It's been a rough year around ZRecs HQ. If you follow me on Twitter or have "liked" us on Facebook you already know the whys, but I'm finally ready to go into a little more detail here on our blog.

One year ago today, I lost one of my best friends to postpartum depression. A sweet baby girl lost her mama, a husband lost his wife, parents lost their daughter, and the world lost a compassionate, generous activist.

I met Kristi Marie Couvillon Wise during college sometime in the mid-nineties. I don't remember where or the exact date, and when I look back on it, it seems like I'd just known her forever. There are few people with whom I've had that instant connection -- that moment that changes so quickly and seamlessly from the just-getting-to-know-you phase to knowing that you will grow old and still be laughing and sharing with this person.

The thing I hadn't yet put my finger on in those early days - I suspect that I recognized it but couldn't name it -- was that beyond all of the music and philosophies and books and other random interests that we shared, we also shared a struggle with chronic depression.

I don't remember how or why we first spoke of it. Did she mention it or did I bring it up? Was it in the context of a current episode, or were we sharing our pasts? But I saw that for the first time, there was a person who didn't judge, didn't scorn, wasn't shocked when I described what it felt like to be sinking into that black abyss of depression. She didn't tell me to keep a stiff upper lip or to think of other things; she acknowledged and she shared her own struggles and experiences with me. Our battle with depression was only part of our relationship, although it was an important part. But I also loved Kristi for her boundless spontaneity, her free spirit, her compassion, sincerity, and intelligence. Kristi was one of the most giving people that I've ever met.

As we grew to adulthood, we continued to share our struggles. She helped me through a battle against PTSD and postpartum depression after the birth of my daughter Z. I consoled her when she had a miscarriage and through years of infertility. We celebrated together at weddings, she came to my daughter's birthday parties, we each moved across the country and back at different times, we started and sometimes changed careers. There were times, of course, when our contact would slow (can you remember a time when texting didn't exist and when internet access was not available everywhere you went?) but for the big things -- the sorrows, the losses, the wins -- we made sure to talk or visit.

Kristi blossomed in her adulthood, first as a social worker, then as a defense attorney, and then as a working mother. The passion and love she shared with her friends and family came through in her law career and work with the Texas Civil Rights Project, where she labored tirelessly for inmates on Texas' death row.

A year ago today, Kristi died after nearly five months of torturous depression. She was seeking treatment and had a strong support system, but depression is not always cured by popping a Prozac. It's often a long experiment to see which drugs have an effect on your body while trying to be convinced that the thoughts coming from your mind are not your own. She left a six-month-old daughter, a loving husband, and countless others to mourn her.

I cannot imagine the rest of my life without Kristi. My heart breaks for her daughter who will never know the light that shone so bright from her mother, but also to think of the sadness and pain from which she so desperately needed relief. I still mourn her every day. I wonder what I could have done, what any of us could have done to help her. I think about all of the other people in the world who have lost loved ones to suicide -- all of the other children who must grow up without a mother or a father, all of the parents who lost their children too early.

I think of my own struggles with depression, my own spirals into the abyss. I think of how we toss around the words "depression" or "depressed" like a baseball. "I'm so depressed that it's raining today" or "That movie was really depressing." Do we cheapen the meaning of the word and lighten our impressions of true depression? Does using the word depression in those ways make us underestimate its deadly power? Certainly it makes it easier to brush off when someone says tells you they are depressed -- do you have to take it seriously like when someone says they have cancer? Or have we so watered down the word that it's more like telling someone you stubbed your toe? ("Oh, I'm sorry, that must hurt. Just keep on truckin' and you'll feel better in no time.")

A year has passed. In some ways, it feels like Kristi died only yesterday, but in others, I have moved forward. And so I find myself beginning to do again what we at ZRecs have prided ourselves on doing for years: advocating, raising awareness, and contributing my voice to the many that are trying to make things different somehow. I can't change what happened to Kristi (oh how I desperately wish I could) but maybe if we all work together we can change the next person. Maybe we can make postpartum depression be treated as a serious issue by our society and our media. Maybe we can help support new moms better and make sure that they are getting the help and the relief that they need while they are adjusting to becoming mothers. Maybe together we can ask all of our new mom friends, not just "How is the baby?but "How are you?" "Are you feeling sad?" "Do you know the signs of postpartum depression?" "What can I do to help you?"

When we see a loved one who seems to be struggling, we can reach out to them -- offer help, help them find help, tell them that depression is not a way of life -- is not something to brush off. We can make our children aware of the signs of depression and suicide -- help them become fluent in identifying those signs -- maybe help them save a friend. We can work together to stop the damned bullying already.

I've found somewhere to start that works for me: Raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I'm going to walk one of their Out of the Darkness walks, because I'm committed to making suicide an acceptable topic of conversation. I'm going to help them raise money for education and awareness. And slowly, as I put the pieces back together, I'll see what I can do to raise awareness for postpartum depression. Because no one should feel that desperate. No one should see suicide as their only way out. And because babies deserve mothers and mothers deserve help.

The Reverend David Hoster wrote a beautiful eulogy for Kristi's service and I'll leave you with his last words:

"Then our new responsibility will begin. The Kristi that we cherish is all about life, and it is the responsibility of those who know and cherish her to meet her death with life. Whatever she brought to life in each of us must be the living, triumphant answer to the question that is no longer a question, but a straightforward declaration of fact: how could she not be among us!"

If you'd like to donate to my Out of the Darkness walking team (all funds are donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), you can do so on my participant page. I'd be so thankful if you did.

If you or someone you know is in emotional crisis or is showing the warning signs for suicide, please seek help immediately or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Dear Distinguished Board Members,

There are few organizations we still expect to be guided by principle, but the Girl Scouts is one of them, and the mandate is both simple and profound: To empower girls to make the world a better place. I am writing today to ask you to do this, even when it costs you. Yep, I'm talking about Girl Scout cookies.

The meaning of Girl Scouting

I spent several years in Girl Scouts as a child, back when Girl Scouts started out as Brownies, spent more time outdoors than in, and sang campfire songs I wouldn't dare teach my troop today. That's right -- I'm now the leader of Troop #9045, a first-year group of twelve Daisies and Brownies who meet in a first-grade classroom from 5:30 to 6:30 every other Tuesday night. Next year we'll have Daisies, Brownies, and Juniors, ages five to ten, and will cap our troop size at around twenty girls.

The Girl Scouts-produced curriculum, It's Your World--Change It! is a great launchpad for our troop activities, though I follow it loosely, in part because we're blending Brownies and Daisies and find ways to design activities that engage all of the girls together. As far as I can see -- and the materials seem pretty straightforward -- the goal of this curriculum is to help our young girls use their natural curiosity and empathy to find opportunities to have a positive impact in the world. I've been looking ahead to the materials you offer for Juniors and Cadets as well, and I'm excited -- they take on environmental and social issues that our children will inherit soon enough, unflinchingly but with sensitivity as well. Overall, it's the modern Girl Scouts' emphasis on service, outreach, and engagement with issues that matter to kids -- approached from a child's perspective but harnessing the wisdom of elders -- that makes me a passionate advocate for the role of Girl Scouts in a world now full of sports-oriented, special-interest, and keep-em-off-the-streets after-school programs that simply didn't exist when the Girl Scouts were founded a century ago this year. Girls believe in Girl Scouting, and through Girl Scouting they learn to believe in themselves and in their voices.

A failure of leadership... in a leadership organization

But the way the Girl Scouts USA leadership - you, the board - have handled our girls' concerns about the environmental impact of Girl Scout Cookies under the tenure of board president Connie Lindsey and CEO Kathy Cloninger - is starting to make me feel like a hypocrite. And given the choice between my girls and the organization that purports to support them, I'll choose the girls every time.

In case the details of this case have faded from memory, in 2008 Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen started working on a project to earn their Girl Scout Bronze Award. They researched endangered orangutans in Indonesia and discovered that palm oil production is destroying the world's last remnants of orangutan habitat. To be more specific, palm oil producers pay laborers to burn the forests and slaughter every orangutan found along the way, paying a bounty on each one. Any infants that survive this purging are sold as pets, the land is converted to palm oil production, and the orangutan populations continue their nosedive toward extinction.

Noting that palm oil is an ingredient in Girl Scout cookies, Madison and Rhiannon did what any good Girl Scout would do -- they sought the nearest and most effective target for their change-making activities. They started an education campaign, circulated petitions and even met Jane Goodall and got her to sign their petition. Unfortunately, the Girl Scouts administration (you) told the girls that while the bakers that supply cookies to Girl Scouts are a part of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which "researches" and "develops" sustainable sources of palm oil, these bakers are unable to remove the palm oil from their cookies.

We'll set aside, for this discussion, what exactly the RSPO is and whether there will be any suitable forest left for orangutans to live in by the time they achieve their goals. Specifically, it's unclear how the activities of the RSPO will do anything to stop or even slow the destruction of the forests on which the orangutan depend; based on their certification criteria, it seems entirely possible that a new plantation established through the burning of forests and the slaughter of orangutans could then apply for a "sustainable producer" certification without a blemish to their name. Add to that the fact that Girl Scouts (you) won't even demand that cookie bakers buy palm oil from producers currently certified under this scheme, and, well, the cookies are tasting a little less sweet.

What's worse -- what's unconscionable, in fact -- is that an organization whose stated mission is to make girls believe they can make a difference would fail to respond to the call to leadership of the very girls in whom it helped foster the confidence to speak up for what's right. And why? Because it was not in the organization's immediate, secure, financial, and public relations interest. Meanwhile, other groups are taking the lead you've abandoned. The UK's Girl Guides [Readers: Girl Scouts, throughout most of the world, are called Girl Guides] have now eliminated palm oil from the cookies they sell, substituted with olive and rapeseed oil, but all we hear in the U.S. is that, as the forests and their inhabitants are being wiped (are almost wiped) from this earth, the issue is complicated and the solution lies somewhere in the fog of the future.

(We refuse to) get the message

To me, Girl Scouts of the USA's stance sends a frightening message to girls, and that message is the one they already receive on every corporate-sponsored kids' cartoon and in free teaching materials provided by fast food chains: That "making a difference" is all about thinking small, and keeping it that way, and making the easy choices while putting off the hard ones until it's too late. Picking up litter and encouraging recycling but never asking where all this waste is coming from and what can be done about it. Getting fresh air and exercise but never examining the food we eat or where it comes from. Running "Save the Rainforests" educational campaigns while selling cookies that contribute to their destruction. You -- we -- were supposed to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

This year -- our first year as a troop -- we took a "soft sell" approach to getting our girls on board with cookie sales. Our six-year-old daughter, who took a keen interest in the issue of orangutans being killed by the scores in the jungles of Indonesia, and the fact that they might not even exist outside of zoos by the time she is old enough to vote, chose to sell homemade cookies instead of the official Girl Scout cookies. She also split the cost with her parents to "adopt" an orangutan through Orangutan Outreach ( Luna, pictured at left), which cost her $40 of her own savings. She also made a homemade "I don't eat palm oil" T-shirt.

That six-year-old girl then sold 48 dozen cookies at $5 a dozen, studiously working within the rules established by Girl Scouts for off-script fundraising (your policies on that front are another story entirely), and although we haven't done the math yet, we think the net will be around $3 per dozen cookies sold. We'll split that profit down the middle, donating about $70 to Orangutan Outreach and $70 to our troop for next year's supply fund.

The rest of our troop sold about a thousand boxes of Girl Scout cookies. (I believe the troop nets about forty cents a box on those, or $400 in total, for an average of about $40 per participating Girl Scout.) See, as their troop leader, it didn't feel fair to bring five-year-olds into the world of tough choices that your board is forcing the rest of us -- parents, consumers, troop leaders -- to make. I couldn't see a way to help them recognize and confront this issue without deflating their interest, or their parents', in the organization I believe in so passionately.

But I won't do it again. Next year's curriculum is It's Your Planet -- Love It! and I'm not making excuses for you any longer. Those voices you heard over the past few months telling people not to buy Girl Scout cookies are going to be louder next year, and you're going to have fewer allies ready to argue against them. Those who took the bait this year and let themselves believe that your RSPO membership represented a meaningful change in direction will experience nagging doubts. And as for my girls -- Troop 9045 -- we are going to hold ourselves responsible for what we say and do, and we are going to practice what you preach. We're going to discuss, evaluate, and decide as a troop how to address the issue of Girl Scout cookies' role in the deforestation of Indonesia and the likely extinction of one of the most amazing species on our planet. And we're going to do it whether you're on board or not.

Sincerely,
Jennifer McNichols
Leader, Girl Scout Troop #9045
Girl Scouts of Central Texas

Amy over at Crunchy Domestic Goddess has an interesting post recently about disposing of - and passing on - used children's toys, and it encouraged us to write about something that has been bothering us for a while here at ZRecs. From our point of view, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is one of the biggest reasons why the trashing of useful - and perfectly safe - children's toys is going to get worse, not better, in the years to come.

We review and process dozens of children's products every month - during the ramp-up to the holiday shopping season, sometimes hundreds. These products are evaluated and use-tested for inclusion in the ZRecs Guide, considered for inclusion in ZRecs gift guides and for stand-alone reviews, and written about and discussed in opportunities we are offered to discuss kids' products in other forums. (Most recently, we wrote about twenty or so kids' gift recommendations that went out to 800,000 families through another parenting site, and appeared in a safer holiday toys TV segment in Austin that aired in December.)

To make a long story short, 90% of the products we receive - almost all of which are solicited by us, not sent unsolicited - are removed from their packaging and very gently used. So it was with great distress that we discovered that one of the outcomes of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is that thrift stores around the country are beginning to stop stocking and selling most used children's items, everything from cribs - which probably shouldn't be on the secondhand market at all these days thanks to regular recalls of monstrous scope - to all manner of children's toys, games, and in some cases even books.

We live in College Station, Texas. Our local Goodwill stores no longer accept any used children's products, as a matter of policy, because of the cryptic but very real responsibility for total product safety that CPSIA places on them. (Please don't tell me thrift stores are off the hook. We've heard it, and they aren't. And "we probably won't have the resources to prosecute at your level" is not an acceptable business model, even for a charitable organization.) We have seen other cities where Goodwills and other thrift stores have enacted similar policies, and some that haven't. Even Goodwill stores, we learned in a call we placed to their national headquarters, can choose how to respond to CPSIA with regard to stocking children's toys.

Just before Christmas this year, we made our regular donation of still-in-the-box toys to a holiday toy drive - items we had not requested and had no interest in opening, and duplicates - you'd be surprised how often companies accidentally send two of an item, through some administrative glitch or another. But then we tried to donate a large number of items we had opened, used several times in play, photography, and adult assessment, but were in 'like new" condition, and had a very difficult time doing so. Our local Goodwill refused the toys entirely and the battered women's shelter would only take stuff that was still in the box. For everything out of its original packaging, we had to work really hard to find places that would accept use toys - many ended up going to local children's centers and waiting rooms that wouldn't be selling or giving away the toys, and thus were not covered under CPSIA.

For our purposes, it worked out fine. Things were a bit more hectic than usual but we tapped into a few new charities and outlets for the copious volume of stuff we receive and review. But it made our skin crawl to imagine how few parents would go through these hoops in order to get rid of used toys their children had outgrown or didn't like, or even Christmas gifts that fell quickly out of favor and needed a new home.

After Christmas had come and gone, we did a clean sweep of Z's old toys, getting rid of things she had outgrown or didn't really use under the auspices of making room for the new. Z was a trooper and gave up much more than we had anticipated, allowing us to free up space in her bedroom and the study that doubles as a playroom and make it easier for us to keep things clean and orderly so she can access the stuff she does love. But now I have two bins of toys sitting in my living room while I try to figure out what to do with them. My plan at this point is to list them on our local free email lists, but really, I'm pressed for time as it is and I'd much rather give those two giant bins of toys away in one fell swoop and have it over and done with! Listing them and making individual arrangements for pickup and so on and so forth is just barely within my ability to manage.

I can't stand to throw fun, safe, and useful toys away. But for someone less dedicated, I can imagine that those two giant bins of toys would have long been placed in a couple of giant trash bags and taken to the curb. And part of me can't blame them. My house is cluttered enough as it is and I barely have the time to scout around for places brave enough to accept them - including the vegetable-dyed wooden toys and organic cotton teethers and the other admirably safety- and environmentally-conscious children's products that make up the bulk of what we review. And not only do we fill up our landfills with these perfectly useful children's products, but where are children in families that rely on the used market - now and in the future - supposed to get toys and books? Do we just let them do without?

Almost everyone who follows what's happening at the CPSC knows that CPSIA is badly in need of fixing. The Commission itself has, after much floundering and self-contradiction, sent a list of recommended action items to Congress to address major problems in CPSIA - lead used in inaccessible product components (youth ATVs, bicycle valve stems, etc.), printed materials (books - a huge CPSIA problem, more on that in another post), the imposition of mass-production requirements on small crafters - but any better guidance or clearer regulation on the used children's market is a telling omission. The agency has also issued a second stay of enforcement on most provisions of the new law, just as it did one year ago.

We waited with bated breath for the CPSC to make its wish list of amendments to the law. Now that they have, it is looking clearer that secondhand children's goods are going to be left out in the cold even if the CPSIA is fixed - and we are going to see more and more dumpsters and dumps filling up because parents can't give the stuff away easily anymore.

Whether this problem will fade as a generation of children's products are purged from circulation is an unknown at this point. The CPSC would like us to think so, because most new products must be marked "indelibly" with the means to track them back to their source, so recalled items can be removed from the marketplace as they turn up at resellers. But this requires the CPSC to deliver a means for thrift stores to access this new, rich source of information about batches and lots of each and every children's product in a cost-effective manner, and certain types of products really cannot be marked in this way, and will be "rebels" once they are separated from their packaging, their tags are removed, or ink washes off.

It also begs the question of whether we are willing, as a society, to eject such a massive volume of newly-classified waste into our environment in order to protect ourselves from the portion that is truly unsafe, and enjoy the accompanying surge in downstream effects (phthalates leach just as well in landfills as they do in playrooms, although their route into our bodies may be less direct). The trouble is, no one asked us if we were; but it's happening, and if it isn't happening in your own backyard now, it will be before you know it.

If you'd like to learn more about our concerns about the CPSIA, from the perspective of bloggers who are all about safety in children's products, you can read the post we wrote about the CPSIA nearly a year ago today.

Last week, the CPSC announced the recall of a children's book published by St. Martin's Press that included a piece of vinyl that contained dangerous levels of lead. While the recall was the first in what will likely be a long list of novelty children's books coming under CPSC scrutiny for their incorporation of sketchy plastics, what really caught our eye about it was a note in the recall notice that indicated that the CPSC had been alerted to the product's lead levels by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG). Digging deeper, we discovered that US PIRG had reported their findings in a report published on November 24, 2009 - a full month and a half before the recall was announced.

Meanwhile, Target is continuing to "investigate" the Green Baby onesie ZRecs, in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Health, identified in November as containing nearly four times the legal limit of lead in its tagless label - putting it in direct contact with a baby's skin. The California Attorney General notified Target of the finding and Target stopped selling it while promising to investigate the matter themselves. (The Washington Post, in an otherwise excellent article on "citizen regulators," erroneously stated that Target had recalled the onesie. The Post ran a correction this week.) Target representative Beth Hanson confirmed in an email to us a week ago:

• Upon receiving the information from the California Attorney General's office about this product, Target issued a voluntary market withdrawal. This product has been removed from sale in our stores and we continue to investigate the issue.


• Once a market withdrawal has been issued, we hard lock all items at the point of sale. A “hard lock” means that should a guest attempt to purchase a withdrawn product while we are in the process of removing it from the sales floor, the product will flag our cashiers with a “do not sell” message at the register.


• It is important for all of our guests to know that Target is committed to providing high quality and safe products. We realize that product safety is top of mind for our guests. We continue to partner with our vendors to ensure that the best products are in our stores and online at Target.com.


• Since this is an ongoing investigation about this particular product, we are unable to provide further specifics.


• Guests who have purchased the withdrawn product can return it to any Target store for a full refund.

We inquired further regarding the timeline such an investigation might take, and Hanson declined to provide any estimate or any additional information about Target's review process. But it's hard, on its face, to accept that it should take this long for an issue like this to be resolved. The longer a company like Target waits, the greater the distance between purchase and notification, the greater the exposure children face, and the fewer returns the company is likely to get when the product is ultimately (presumably) recalled. The disincentives to conduct a timely recall are real and obvious.

The CPSC is also looking into this case and we are confident it will be resolved eventually. But how long can a company like Target make consumers wait before they cast even greater doubt on the commitment to safety the company claims to set as such a high priority?

More on onesie hazards to come.

The Juvenile Product Manufacturers' Association (JPMA) is pleased to announce that G'Night Grizzly, more commonly known as the grizzly bear or Ursus arctos horribilis, has met all applicable requirements for voluntary ASTM crib standard F1169 and has been certified as such through JPMA's rigorous certification process.

"G'Night Grizzly makes an excellent sleeping environment for infants," JPMA communications director Russ Gorman said in a press release Monday. "All moving parts have been proven to last through decades of use, and its breathing gently rocks infants to sleep. Furthermore, in this recessionary climate, the grizzly is a budget-friendly solution for parents, as it requires no mattress."

The G'Night Grizzly retails for $799 at WalMart, Babies 'R' Us, and national park gift shops, and is available in brown, deep red, blond, and in a limited edition in gray.

The JPMA vigorously contests the relevance of child injury data relating to the use of bears as infant sleeping environments. G'Night Grizzly easily passed all applicable federal and ASTM limits for claw protrusion and crushing strength.

Past infant injuries associated with grizzly-based bedding resulted from parents' failure to follow instructions attached to each G'Night Grizzley, which outline the restrictive diet and low indoor air temperatures necessary to keep the grizzly in hibernation mode. Yet several companies' proactive, voluntary recalls of previously marketed bears - for repair kits that ranged from a tranquilizer gun to several pounds of frozen salmon - clearly demonstrate that the juvenile product industry is more than capable of correcting for any missteps along the road of progress and innovation.

More than 2,000 products are JPMA Certified in 20 categories: bassinets/cradles, bath seats, booster seats, children’s folding chairs, portable bed rails, infant bouncers, high chairs, play yards/non-full size cribs, walkers, carriages/strollers, gates/enclosures, full-size cribs, portable hook-on chairs, infant swings, hand-held infant carriers, soft infant carriers, stationary activity centers, frame infant carriers, changing tables, and toddler beds.

The JPMA urges parents to seek out the JPMA Certification Seal when shopping for baby.

Here are the highlights from the CPSC/Health Canada recall notice for 2.1 million Stork Craft drop side cribs, in case you missed it. After that, our thoughts on this mess.

1. More than 2.1 million Stork Craft drop-side cribs, including about 147,000 Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo, have been recalled. The recall involves approximately 1,213,000 units distributed in the United States and 968,000 units distributed in Canada. The recall includes Stork Craft cribs with manufacturing and distribution dates between January 1993 and October 2009. This recall also includes Stork Craft cribs with the Fisher-Price logo that have manufacturing dates between October 1997 and December 2004 (that's every Fisher-Price Stork Craft crib, folks).


2. The cribs’ drop-side plastic hardware can break, deform, or parts can become missing. In addition, the drop-side can be installed upside-down, which can result in broken or disengaged plastic parts. All of these problems can cause the drop-side to detach in one or more corners. When the drop-side detaches, it creates space between the drop-side and the crib mattress. The bodies of infants and toddlers can become entrapped in the space which can lead to suffocation. Complete detachment of drop-sides can lead to falls from the crib.


3. The parties are aware of 110 incidents of drop-side detachment, resulting in 15 entrapments, four of them resulting in death by suffocation, and 20 falls from cribs that resulted in injuries ranging from concussion to bumps and bruises. The cribs involved in these incidents had plastic drop-side hardware that had broken, missing, or deformed claws, connectors, tracks, or flexible tab stops; loose or missing metal spring clips; stripped screws; and/or drop-sides installed upside-down.


4. This recall does not involve any cribs with metal rod drop-side hardware. It involves only those cribs with plastic trigger and one-hand-system drop-side hardware.


5. These cribs were sold all over. If you think you might even possibly have one, please check as soon as humanly possible. And if you do, stop using it immediately and until you get a repair kit. Seriously. If you're new to co-sleeping, keep soft fluffy stuff away from your child's face, place a baby on their back, and don't drink to the point of intoxication, use sleeping pills, or take drugs. You'll be fine.


6. For additional information, contact Stork Craft toll-free at (877) 274-0277 anytime to order the free repair kit, or visit www.storkcraft.com (whoops, it's down!).

We have taken a "mixed-blessing" position on the evolving plan to ban drop side cribs from the market, and we think that influential members of the children's products industry would prefer to see drop side cribs banned completely rather than be forced to use more expensive metal hardware that will make them last longer and to invest in the R&D to make them easier for consumers to put together properly. (See item #4, above.)

We don't like to demonize companies for operating in a particular business climate. American consumers are price-sensitive. Cribs are expensive. But what we are seeing now is a crisis with a solution that will reward the bottom-feeding companies producing the cheapest, most failure-prone cribs on the market by preventing anyone from making a demonstrably safe version of the baby traps they currently peddle. In essence, it will force the safe drop-side crib manufacturers - even those who produce cribs in U.S. factories, use metal hardware, and have never had a crib recalled due to a child being injured - from eliminating their lines because plastic hardware fails and assembly methods are not idiot-proofed.

Here's our rough count, using CPSC data, of the number of cribs recalled for design flaws like weak crib slats, baby-suffocating gaps, crib slats spaced to entrap infants, faulty mattress supports, too-tall mattresses that allowed children to crawl over the railing, stretchy suffocating side wall materials, lead paint violations, and paint chipping choking hazards, from 2007-2009:

~1,020,000

And here's the number of cribs recalled for faulty drop-side design or hazardous improper assembly, from 2007-2009:

~5 million

Here's a list of the now-recalled Stork Craft cribs that had been certified as safe by the JPMA - which means that they were verified by JPMA to meet the current, voluntary ASTM standards for cribs.


Clearly, there's a crisis - unless you're the JPMA. Then it's a bunch of media hype mixed with dumb consumers who don't know how to follow instructions. Here's what the JPMA published about drop side cribs hours before the Stork Craft recall was announced:

To alleviate confusion that is in the media regarding the recently announced recall of certain drop-side cribs, the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA), the not for profit trade association that promotes infant safety and the development of recognized ASTM International product safety standards, reassures the public regarding the safety of properly used, drop side cribs.

All new cribs on the market today must meet minimum government requirements. In addition there are consensus performance standards, which are established by ASTM with involvement of the government and recognized experts, to which JPMA certifies cribs and other durable infant products. JPMA also reminds parents and care givers, that when you assemble a crib to the manufacturer's instructions and use it properly, a crib provides the safest sleeping environment for baby.

Recent media reports notwithstanding, cribs are intended to last for years (or multiple births) when properly cared for. Crib instructions which are attached to cribs include information on assembly, maintenance, cleaning, storage and use.

"JPMA believes that instead of alarming parents, we should work together to educate them about the importance of the proper use, assembly and reassembly of cribs and how to provide the safest sleep environment for a child," said Mike Dwyer, JPMA Executive Director. "The safest place for a child is in a fully functional, properly assembled crib. Parents are urged to closely inspect the hardware and stability of their cribs to ensure all parts are in place and secure when assembling and re-assembling cribs."

The Consumer Products Safety Commission has NEVER said that a properly assembled crib with fully functional hardware should not be used. Each year hundreds of deaths occur when children are placed in a sleep environment that is not specifically designed for children. Parents should continue using properly assembled cribs in good condition as it provides the safest sleep environment for children. [Source (PDF)]

But that "has NEVER said" will change to "NOW PROHIBITS" in a year, maybe a year and a half. That's because a new ASTM standard that excludes drop-side cribs entirely has been passed and will be published soon. At that point, every crib wishing to meet ASTM voluntary crib standards (try getting sold in a major retailer if you aren't ASTM certified) will have to have four fixed sides for at least the bottom 12" of the four crib walls.

Here's what we say to JPMA (they never answer):


That's because once the ASTM standard is published, the CPSC will review it, take comments from anyone, address those comments, and probably adopt the ASTM standard as federal law.

But ASTM is not the only game in town - Underwriters Laboratories has a much more stringent crib standard, which might offer some direction for requirements that any company wishing to produce drop-side cribs would need to meet. (It's safe to say that the big drop-side crib makers do not want this to occur.) This would force quality up for those who wished to serve that market. I'll embed CPSC engineer Patricia Hackett's comparison of the standards below, but what really matters are slides 10 and 12. Purple means the standard meets the existing federal regulation, pink means it doesn't address the safety area at all, and blue means the standard has stricter requirements than the federal standard. Th e ASTM standard fails to meet even the federal standards in 19 areas. The UL standard exceeds them in 13.



As Nancy Cowles of Kids In Danger confirmed with us, the UL standard was discussed during ASTM's deliberations, but the manufacturers at the meeting were loathe to hold themselves to its standards. Go figure.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this regulatory trajectory we're on is that there are already thousands of old, rickety cribs on the market that people keep around despite safety standard changes and DIY hacks (substitute hardware, reassembly without instructions) because they cannot afford a new crib, don't want to pay for one, or like something about the one they have access to. Parents already do this for many good and not-so-good reasons.

The hazard to come

In our first post last March on the evolving situation at ASTM regarding drop-side cribs, we wrote:

If the issue is one of quality, what does it say about the members of the ASTM F15.18 committee - which likely includes representatives from every company with an interest in infant cribs, i.e. everyone who makes them - that they would prefer an outright ban on the design than mandated quality improvements?

What sort of benefits might accrue to manufacturers who rely on the low end of the market to ban designs that can only be produced well at a higher cost? In other words, if higher standards for drop sides required more expensive parts and better design, would manufacturers who relied on a high volume of cheap cribs be put at a competitive disadvantage? Could these manufacturers, voting as a bloc, make a tactical decision to eliminate this portion of the market rather than abandon it to their higher-quality competitors?

One more thing: The current climate of fear surrounding the CPSC's ability to bring the hammer down on thrift stores and resellers for selling products they "should know" are unsafe means that the new ASTM standard's passage will result in the majority of U.S. cribs suddenly, without recall or even demonstrated hazard, becoming non-reusable commodities.

I'd like to amend that last bit. These cribs are likely to remain on the market in numbers far greater than what we currently see in older, out-of-date cribs, because parents with back problems, parents on the short side, and new moms in the ever-increasing number of women who give birth via C-section, all have a real need for them. There may be alternative solutions - Dream On Me showed off a crib with a mattress that could be mechanically raised and lowered with the push of a button, and combinations of lowered legs and hinged partial drop sides may offer some benefit. But drop-side cribs serve a meaningful need that will not go away quickly, and in that gap there will be unnecessary deaths that could be avoided with a more stringent hardware and design standard that still permitted drop-sides to be manufactured and sold.