Sleep, Baby, Sleep…Just Watch Where!
Submitted by Dr. Gwenn Is In
This is very alarming! There’s been an increase in nursery-related injuries since 2005 that doesn’t seem to be related to product safety. As reported by the Wall Street Journal today,
“(n)ursery products were involved in 66,400 injuries that sent children to emergency rooms in 2006, an 11% increase from the year earlier, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The agency said in a report yesterday that the number of injuries to infants and children under age five involving cribs, high chairs, walkers and other items rose by 6,600 from 59,800 in 2005.
CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese said safety officials don’t know why the number of nursery-product injuries increased after declining in 2005. “We cannot identify the reason for the increase but it is a concern for the agency,” Ms. Vallese said.
The report said the incidents weren’t necessarily caused by product failures. Falls were the leading cause of injuries related to nursery products, with head injuries accounting for 42% of all injuries.”
In the same report, the CPSC reported that 241 children died between 2002 and 2004 from other nursery items such as strollers, baths, and play yards.
And, yesterday, the CPSC recalled 24,000 cribs manufactured by Munire Furniture for safety concerns.
This list of warnings and recalled items is frightening and should make us all pause for a moment. If the products are “safe”, why are these babies getting injured? I can thing of a number of issues.
First, as experts have suggested already, the current safety guidelines and screening protocols should be reviewed and revised. Perhaps we need better standards? Perhaps we need clearer definitions of current standards? Perhaps we need a better or different monitoring system?
Second, I’m concerned that parents do not understand how to properly use and monitor babies and toddlers who are placed in these items. As reported by USA Today, the CPSC noted this week that 36 babies died between 2002 and 2004 from parents not watching their children while in baby baths and bath seats.
So, something is not going right with parent education around safety issues for infants with regards to use of infant nursery products.
I’m not alone in my view. The Wall Street Journal report of this story quoted the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association as noting that they were “concerned about any reports regarding the injury or death of our nation’s children,”….Then they added: “but that caregivers were often at fault.”
The Wall Street Journal opted for an interesting headline for this story: “Rise in Nursery-Product Injuries Baffles U.S. Safety Watchdog”. But, as you can see, this situation is far from baffling. Other than the recalled products, if we assume that most of these nursery products are safe, than user error is to blame for this scary rise in infant injuries. So, we need better user’s manuals and user training. And, better education for the importance of user monitoring of their own infants. The latter, I have a feeling, is the single most important variable in this entire equation.
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