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.