And if anything, those numbers underestimate the danger of crib bumpers since they’re unlikely to have been mentioned as a distinctly separate culprit on a death certificate. This number is almost three times higher than the average during each of the three previous seven-year spans, when there were eight deaths tied to the use of crib bumpers reported to CPSC.
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“We do not recommend the use of any sort of cot bumpers and urge all parents to follow our safer sleep advice to use a flat firm mattress in a cot or Moses basket with no loose bedding, pillows or bumpers”.
“Crib bumpers are killing kids”, senior author Dr. Bradley Thach, a professor emeritus of pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine, said in a news release. He said: “Bumpers are more unsafe than we originally thought”.
The new study was published today (Nov. 24) in The Journal of Pediatrics.
The study found 77 deaths nationwide attributed to crib bumpers from 1985 through 2012.
A further 146 babies were involved in incidents in which the youngsters almost suffocated, choked or were strangled. No other objects were between the infants’ faces and the bumpers.
However, the researchers linked more deaths to crib bumpers than the 48 indicated in the CPSC data.
”This highlights the most important limitation of the study”. This number may be low, researchers said, because crib bumper-caused deaths are often not listed as such.
But Scheers and Thach said their research overwhelmingly proves that the bumpers, regardless of size, are a primary cause of suffocation in cribs. For example, nine of the 16 deaths occurred because the infants were wedged between bumpers and pillows. Newer mesh bumpers and vertical bumpers that wrap crib slats were not included in the study because there is little information about such items yet.
“It’s a problem that’s been a matter of discussion for some time now”, Thach said. “Crib bumpers serve no goal”.
The study also found 146 crib bumper injuries over the past 30 years. But in a massive change in baby furniture, the allowable distance between slats was changed in 1973 to prevent that.
The irony is crib bumpers became popular as a safety measure to prevent babies from getting their heads stuck between the slats. Health Canada also warns that babies’ heads can get trapped between the pad and the side of the crib, and long ribbons or strings used to secure the pads to the crib is a strangulation hazard.
Either way, no federal regulations govern padded crib bumpers, beyond a 2012 CPSC voluntary standard limiting their thickness. In 2013, the state of Maryland banned their sale, led by the city of Chicago, which first did in 2011.
Although they are widely available in the United Kingdom and overseas, the NHS does not recommend cot bumpers – warning parents that their baby may become “tangled” in the fastenings.
The researchers’ review of the CPSC data does not give us the entire picture, however.
‘A ban on crib bumpers would reinforce the message that no soft bedding of any kind should be placed inside a baby’s crib, ‘ he said. “There is one sure-fire way to prevent infant deaths from crib bumpers: Don’t use them, ever”. Crib Bumpers Continue to Cause Infant Deaths: A Need for a New Preventive Approach.
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Scheers NJ, Woodard DW, Thach BT.
