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.

We contacted the great folks at child safety advocacy group Kids In Danger about the voluntary ban on drop-side cribs that was approved by the industry standards group ASTM in the spring. The nonprofit had a representative on the ASTM committee that made the decision, and we asked KID why a standard couldn't have been developed that made drop-side crib designs safer. According to KID's Nancy A. Cowles, they worked to get approval of a workable standard that would have improved drop-side cribs rather than banning them outright. In response to our query, Cowles wrote:

We believe the UL [Underwriters Laboratories] standard, developed with input from many sources and including rigorous tests, would go far in making cribs on the market - including drop side cribs - safer. UL’s ‘racking’ test would simulate the use a crib gets in real life and be more likely to identify durability issues and hardware failures. However, since publishing the standard, UL has been unable to get any manufacturer to agree to test their cribs using this stringent standard. So we supported the move to require four fixed sides at the last ASTM meeting because without rigorous testing that the manufacturers seem unwilling to undergo, it is the best way to keep babies safe in cribs.

You can return to our previous posts on the drop-side ban to read comments from parents who do or don't see the need for them (so let's not rehash that here!), or to get the full backstory. But I'd like to reprint a bit of what we said there, in light of the very helpful information from the experts at Kids In Danger.

In our March 21 post "The Drop-Side Crib Ban: Is There More Than Meets The Eye?" we wrote:

[T]he proposal of an outright elimination of drop-side cribs from ASTM standards - essentially saying that no drop-side crib design can meet a reputable safety standard - has us scratching our heads. There seem to be some unanswered questions in the dance ASTM and the CPSC are doing on this issue.

Is the problem some inherent flaw in drop side designs generally, as the ASTM's move implies, or cheap drop sides with plastic hardware, as the CPSC's letters suggest?

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?

Case closed.

We've been looking into the drop-side crib ban ASTM put on the table a couple of days ago. Although not a legal restriction per se, the move would effectively eliminate drop-side cribs - those designed to allow one side of a crib to slide down to provide easier access - from the U.S. market.

While it's hard not to defer to the collective wisdom of a body as representative and broad-based as ASTM, it's also hard not to think there's some strange politicking going on here.

ASTM is the key voluntary standard-making body for consumer products, and that's just one slice of what their standards encompass - most of their standard-making is done at the materials level (paint, adhesives, pipes), by hundreds of technical committees and a total membership of more than 30,000. Their consumer products division, F15, includes some consumer and trade group representatives, but is mostly comprised of retailers and manufacturers.

ASTM has a better mix of people and agendas than an organization like the JPMA (Juvenile Products Manufacturing Association) which takes anti-regulatory positions you can spot from a mile off; ASTM standards generally arise after some healthy debate among competing interests, and even the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has seats on these committees.

Those debates, however, can be interminable, and that's what appears to have happened within F15.18, the Subcommittee on Cribs, Toddler Beds, Play Yards, Bassinets, Cradles and Changing Tables. The CPSC has done some in-depth investigation and tracking of crib-related injuries and deaths in the last several years, and the agency has been pushing this subcommittee to improve crib standards since at least 2002, specifically in two areas: Crib slat strength and drop side designs. As late as October 2007, the CPSC was urging the subcommittee to expedite the process of revising these standards.

In a letter from the CPSC to its chair, Child Craft Industries' William Suvak, on October 11, 2007, the CPSC wrote:

CPSC continues to receive incident reports relating to crib hardware. Many of these incidents pertain to drop side hardware. Based on the structural design differences between a crib with a drop side and one without it, incident reports and evaluation of incident samples indicate that drop sided cribs are more prone to hardware problems that may lead to potential hazards. Compounding the issue is that many consumers do not realize the potentially deadly hazards associated with a crib with broken or missing hardware.

Improving the ASTM standard to address hardware issues would be a significant effort towards the goal of reducing crib-related deaths and incidents. The subcommittee should consider looking at avenues that would eliminate the use of plastic hardware on any movable component of a crib (drop sides and mattress support systems). Additionally, CPSC staff encourages the subcommittee to explore ways to amend the standard in order to significantly reduce the number of movable components of a crib.

To summarize, what the CPSC appears to have asked for repeatedly during this period was:

• Stricter requirements for the strength of wood used in cribs;


• better instructions, labeling, and/or design changes to prevent improper assembly; and


• the elimination of plastic drop side crib hardware in favor of all-metal parts.

In late 2008, the CPSC issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which is a shot across the bow as far as industry is concerned. So the new offering from ASTM should be understood for what it is - a counter-offer to the CPSC's threat of imposing new regulations from their own offices.

But the proposal of an outright elimination of drop-side cribs from ASTM standards - essentially saying that no drop-side crib design can meet a reputable safety standard - has us scratching our heads. There seem to be some unanswered questions in the dance ASTM and the CPSC are doing on this issue.

Is the problem some inherent flaw in drop side designs generally, as the ASTM's move implies, or cheap drop sides with plastic hardware, as the CPSC's letters suggest?

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.

All of this would be less frustrating if it weren't for the fact that a lot of people rely on drop-side cribs' convenience - namely, short parents, older parents, and anyone with a bad back. Hinged sides are being floated as a viable alternative. But given the benefits of drop-side cribs and the clear suggestions the CPSC had previously provided for improving the safety of these cribs, it seems likely that there is some maneuvering going on here that is not simply about providing consumers the widest variety of safe products possible.

The baby industrial complex is working with ASTM International (the big voluntary safety standards organization governing U.S. consumer products) to ban drop-side cribs from the market. We'll offer our own fairly contrarian assessment of this move and the politics behind it tomorrow on Z Recommends.

The Baby Bjorn Travel Crib had us at "hello" with its lightweight design, and as veterans of the heavy Graco Pack 'n' Play, we appreciated how easy it was to set up and break down.

Here's a video of me opening up and closing the travel crib for the first time - I managed to screw up a step, but it's still a piece of cake.



When set up, the crib is quite sturdy and stable. The size should be good for kids up to three years old. Fabrics are certified to the rigorous Oeko-Tex standard for toxicity.

We took the crib with us on our Seattle trip in October, and it traveled well, although the carrying case could really, really use a shoulder strap - it just doesn't carry well as a giant briefcase, and its light weight would make it perfect for slinging over your shoulder. Other users on Amazon seem to almost universally love it. But the truly amazing thing about it is its weight - the thing is 11 pounds. This is a huge advantage over other travel beds, the best-selling (and very functional) Pack 'n' Play included. The only disadvantage to the design is the splayed legs, which might get in the way in a small room or during nighttime tasks.

The one big drawback to this product is its price - $280 - which we just can't get over. A Pack 'n' Play is heavy, yes, but it costs runs from $100 to as low as $60. A PeaPod offers the portable bed for $55-$85, but not a place for an awake baby to hang out. Baby Bjorn's Travel Crib lists at $280 and sells for at least $240 most places we've seen it, or $235 on Amazon (although the free shipping helps). A $100 price tag would result in Baby Bjorn putting its competition permanently to bed in this market - the product is clearly better. I think they could even pull off $150 without raising too many eyebrows. But $280? I'd hate to see travel crib prices go the route of strollers, with an ever-heightening price ceiling and parents seemingly willing to support the increase.

We are truly wowed, but simply would not pay this much, even for this level of quality and convenience. How about you? Could any travel bed merit this price - now, or in a rosier economy?