CHICAGO — The nation’s top consumer products regulator committed Friday to enacting a mandatory safety standard this year that will ban the sale and manufacture of baby cribs with sides that drop down, a fixture of the American nursery that has been linked to dozens of deaths.
Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Inez Tenenbaum made the vow as her agency for the first time revealed that 32 children have suffocated or strangled to death in the past decade when the drop-sides of their cribs separated.
Most of the deaths occurred in the past few years, according to the CPSC. Another 14 entrapment deaths in cribs might be due to drop-side failure, but the agency didn’t have enough information to be certain.
When a drop-side separates from a crib, it creates a potentially deadly gap. Babies and toddlers can fall into that gap and hang to death. In all, the agency has recalled more than 7 million drop-side cribs.
Major crib manufacturers agreed to a voluntary ban on drop sides this year, but the agreement lacks the teeth of a federal safety standard.
Some manufacturers are working on designs that eliminate the entrapment hazard.
