Chicago bans crib bumpers
Jane Kitchen, Kids Today -- Furniture Today, September 13, 2011
CHICAGO — Chicago became the first city in the U.S. to ban the sale of crib bumper pads last week. The City Council approved the ordinance, which was introduced after Chicago Tribune investigations suggested bumpers pose a suffocation risk to babies.
The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Assn. maintains that crib bumper pads can help prevent injury when used correctly, and the ordinance which proposes to ban bumpers in the City of Chicago could bring unintended consequences if crib bumper pads are not made available to parents and caregivers.
The JPMA said that in 2011, it commissioned a third party review of previous studies of crib bumper pads. Based on the outcomes of the studies that were reviewed by Exponent, an engineering and scientific consulting firm, it found that there were methodological problems that were apparent in the criteria used to select the incidents included for analysis and in the analytical treatment of other potential contributors.
In addition, in March of 2011, Innovative Science Solutions announced that a review of published scientific studies performed for JPMA revealed no direct evaluation of a relationship between crib bumper pad use and infant death.
The Exponent study said that "Investigations into sleep environments of infants consistently fail to identify crib bumpers as a unique or separate source of serious injury or death to sleeping infants. Studies focusing efforts on evaluating sleep-related hazards generally, and crib bumpers explicitly, similarly do not find crib bumpers to be a significant risk."
"Based on the analysis completed by Exponent, the crib bumper pad ban in the City of Chicago is baseless and may be putting children at risk for further injuries due to unintended consequences and parents attempting to create makeshift items to replace bumper pads," said Michael Dwyer, JPMA executive director.
The state of Maryland is considering a similar proposal to ban the sale of bumpers.
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