To prevent deaths and injuries to children, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has approved a new federal mandatory standard to improve the safety of bedside sleepers. The Commission voted unanimously (3 to 0) January 8, 2014.
A bedside sleeper is a bassinet-type product that is secured to an adult bed, has fabric or hard sides and may have a lower side adjacent to the adult mattress. A bedside sleeper is intended to provide a sleeping environment for an infant up to approximately 5 months of age or when a child begins to push up on his or her hands and knees.
The new federal standard incorporates by reference, the voluntary standard (ASTM F2906-13), Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Bedside Sleepers, and requires bedside sleepers to comply with recent modifications required for bassinets in federal standard 16 C.F.R. part 1218. The new bedside sleeper federal standard also includes two recent modifications to the ASTM voluntary standard to address fabric-sided enclosed opening entrapment hazards and consumer misassembly when components are missing.
CPSC has received a total of 27 product-related safety incident reports associated with bedside sleepers dating from January 2001 to May 2013. These incident reports include four fatalities that occurred between 2007 and 2009, which were associated with fabric-sided openings on the products.
The effective date for the mandatory bedside sleeper standard is 6 months after the final rule is published in the Federal Register.
The Commission is required by The Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification Act, Section 104(b) of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), to issue consumer product safety standards for durable infant or toddler products. In the past 5 years, the Commission has approved new stringent federal safety standards for children's products, including full-size cribs, non-full-size cribs, play yards, baby walkers, baby bath seats, children's portable bed rails, toddler beds, infant swings, bassinets and cradles, and hand-held infant carriers.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion annually. CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical or mechanical hazard. CPSC's work to help ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters and household chemicals -– contributed to a decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 40 years.
Federal law bars any person from selling products subject to a publicly-announced voluntary recall by a manufacturer or a mandatory recall ordered by the Commission.
