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Resources of Record for
Child Safety

E. Marla Felcher
Nancy Cowles
email@kidsindanger.org
kidsindanger.org

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IT'S NO ACCIDENT

Sixteen-month-old Danny Keysar, a happy child with soft brown hair and a captivating smile, was put down for his daily nap on May 12, 1998.  His caregiver found him a short time later, his neck trapped in the "V" shaped wedge formed by the collapsed rails of a Playskool Travel-Lite portable crib. Although the government had ordered the crib off store shelves five years earlier, Danny's parents, Linda Ginzel and Boaz Keysar,  his caregiver and the state's inspector for child care facilities were not aware of the recall. A newspaper reporter discovered during his investigation that Danny's death was not an isolated incident.  The Playskool Travel-lite portable crib had been responsible for the death of one other infant since the recall.  Danny was the crib's fifth victim.  Another baby died a few short months after Danny. Danny's parents, Linda and Boaz, know that Danny's death was no accident.  They blamed manufacturer Kolcraft Industries and Hasbro, the three billion dollar corporation whose Playskool brand name was inscribed on the side of the crib.  A child has died in one of every 2,000 Playskool Travel-lite portable cribs sold.  Yet the Playskool Travel-lite portable crib was not the only dangerous portable crib on the market.  Between 1990 and 1997, more than 1.5 million portable cribs marketed by Kolcraft, Evenflo, Draco, Century Products and Baby Trend had a comparable defective device - the center hinge on the top rails. Eleven-month-old Anthony Gonzales* of Los Angeles was the first baby known to die in a center-hinge portable crib and Danny was the twelfth.  Top rail portable cribs have claimed the lives of a total of 15 children.  Three more children have been killed since Danny, including two in 2001.  Marketers of these cribs, all corporations whose names are associated with safe products for children, were well aware that more than a million of the cribs that had been recalled could still have been in circulation.  But their efforts to warn their customers of the dangers of injury or death were minimal.

Recalled in 1993, a $120 reward is offered for the return of this crib.

The profitable infant products industry has been concentrated in the hands of a few large companies:  Cosco, Evenflo, Graco, Century Products, Baby Trend, Draco (now defunct), and Safety lst.  (Safety lst is now a division of Cosco. Graco/Century Products merged and are divisions, along with Little Tikes, of Newell-Rubbermaid.) An average of 87 children die each year in incidents associated with nursery products. For every casualty, approximately 18 children are hospitalized and 233 are treated by emergency rooms for nonfatal injuries. Hospital emergency rooms treated 67,100 children under the age of 5 for injuries occurring from the use of nursery items in 2000. Most parents still do not realize that children's products can pose a serious threat to the lives of their offspring. Unsuspecting parents tend to blame product failures on themselves, unaware that hundreds, even thousands, of other parents may have already called a company's hotline to report the same product defect.

Parents, grandparents, and others spent $4.9 billion, or $1,256 per child, in 1999 for cribs, cradles, baby carriers, car seats, high chairs, strollers and other items which they believed would help them give tender loving care to their infants and toddlers. During that same year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recalled 95 different toys and infant products amounting to tens of millions of units. Since January 2001, more than half of recalls ordered by the CPSC were for children's products. CRADLES Every parent has softly sung "Rockabye, baby, in the tree top" to her precious infant. Nothing beckons images of peace and serenity like a cradle gently swaying to lull a tiny baby to sleep.  But the Graco Converta-Cradle became the cradle of death for 3-month old Alex Malden*, who slid from the middle of the cradle into the corner where he suffocated.  Six-week old Connor Forrester* died in the same manner.  Three months before two-month old Christian Thomas* suffocated in his Converta-Cradle, the CPSC sent a letter to the president of Graco informing him that the agency had received two incident reports involving the Converta-Cradles.   In two other cases of injury and death, the Converta-Cradle had been tilted backward.

16-month-old Danny Keysar died on May 12, 1998 after his neck was trapped in a collapsed Playskool Travel-Lite portable crib

The CPSC asked Graco to furnish information related to the cradle's testing, performance, assembly instructions and warranty claims.  On September 13, 1991, three days after receipt of CPSC's letter,  Graco stopped production of the cradle, but the company did nothing to remove the cradles sitting on store shelves or the ones still being used in homes and daycare centers.  As CPSC investigated complaints during the following four months, stores continued to sell Graco's Converta-Cradle.  It's no accident that during this time, four more babies died in their cradles: Alex*, Connor*, Christian* and 13-week-old Michael Hecht*.  By the time the CPSC convinced Graco to recall the Converta-Cradle in February 1992, the company had already sold 160,000 cradles.  A reporter for the Boston Globe launched his own investigation in 1994 and uncovered a total of 12 infant deaths and at least 21 injuries or near-misses connected with the Graco Converta-Cradle.  Seven months later NBC's Dateline reported 14 deaths associated with the product.

Graco deflected the increasing suspicion of parents and reporters by denying accountability and ascribing blame to the children's parents.  But lawyers for the parents of one of the dead children uncovered documents that indicated the company ignored the warnings of its own engineers, rushed an inadequately tested product to market, and then refused to take responsibility for the deaths and injuries it caused.  Every major manufacturer of baby equipment has recalled a product in recent years after babies have been seriously injured or killed.  Yet even in an industry marred by pervasive corporate negligence, Graco's behavior is unparalleled.  Graco's research and development team had discovered the Converta-Cradle's fatal design flaw: the cradle's head-to-toe swinging motion could shift a child into a corner.  The engineers identified the hazard in April 1989, seven months before the product was marketed to consumers, and additional testing verified that a problem did exist.  Internal documents dated November 1989 showed that Graco's testing engineers asked questions such as, "Head in corner – excessive pressure on neck?" and "What if baby spits up?  Suffocation?"  One engineer noted, "problem of tilted cradle when baby is off-center, head-down."  Ultimately, and unfortunately, the company dismissed the safety warnings of its own engineers. Injuries and deaths caused by hazardous products can go undetected for months, during which time a company continues to push its wares to unsuspecting consumers. Federal regulations allowed Graco to bicker with the CPSC over the rhetoric and tone of the recall press release.  Announcing that the recall was "voluntary," the Converta-Cradle notification gave little indication of the magnitude of the product's dangers, and the word "death" was omitted.  One Graco customer who missed the recall news was the mother of Michael Hecht* who died in September 1991 while sleeping in his Converta-Cradle.  Michael's mother didn't learn about the dangers of the cradle or its recall until 1994. Between 1990 and 2000, Graco recalled 14 products, accounting for more than 10 million units, more than 700 injuries and over two dozen deaths.  The Graco Converta-Cradle disaster is just as likely to occur today as it was 10 years ago because little has changed to prevent it.  In fact, the situation has gotten worse, as the market for baby equipment has mushroomed while the CPSC's budget has remained relatively stagnant.  The market for child equipment has nearly doubled from annual sales of $2.45 billion to $4.9 billion, while the CPSC's $50 million budget is close to where it was in 1981 - $42 million - and it's staff of 480 is about half of what it was 20 years ago.  Underfunded and prohibited from telling the public the whole truth about dangerous products, the CPSC is no match for infant product manufacturers intent on creating an insatiable demand for stylish, cutting edge children's products that promise to make life with baby easier and more convenient.  Today the only infant equipment regulated by mandatory government standards are small parts on all children's products, and car seats, rattles, pacifiers and cribs.  Safety standards for all other baby equipment are voluntary, incomplete, and do not require independent testing.  Manufacturers can decide whether to comply or not.

13,000 units sold between 1992 and 1995, stop use and destroy, firm out of business

OTHER CRIBS Draco sold 13,000 All Our Kids cribs between 1992 and 1995.  The CPSC was not alerted to a problem until May 1994 when a mother reported that her toddler was standing in his crib, leaning on the top rail, and fell when the rail collapsed.  The Draco crib design was similar to that of the Playskool Travel-Lite.  When regulators asked for proof of Draco's testing, an employee responded that "product development data was not recorded and notes of analyses, evaluations, and pre-market test and reports were not kept, and therefore, are unavailable."

Two more children had been killed by top rail, center-hinge portable cribs by April 1996 - one in a Baby Trend crib and one in Evenflo's.  The Baby Trend crib had been recalled in 1995, and there were three brands of center-hinge cribs left on the market: Evenflo, Draco and Century Products.  According to the CPSC engineers' tests, Draco's All Our Kids crib fared worse than the cribs the company produced for Century.  It was the easiest for a child to collapse on his own and failed the shaking test as well. The CPSC had plenty of evidence that the Draco-manufactured cribs were dangerous, but didn't recall the All Our Kids and Century Fold-N-Go cribs until seven months later, after each brand had killed a child.  By then Draco had declared bankruptcy, the California office had been vacated, and the company's president had disappeared. The case of the Baby Trend portable crib is an especially egregious example of how far a manufacturer will go to dilute public perception of a product's dangers.  Baby Trend launched its "Home and Roam" portable cribs in 1992.  In January 1993, the CPSC learned of an incident involving a toddler who had stood up in the Baby Trend crib, causing the crib to fold up and collapse on him.  He was knocked down but not injured because his babysitter came to the rescue.  In February, the same thing happened to another child, but this time, the baby stopped breathing.  His grandfather performed CPR and revived him.  Regulators met with Baby Trend executives in June, and in August, before the parties had decided on a plan of action, a crib collapsed on yet another child, and she stopped breathing.  Her mother revived her, but the baby spent three days in a trauma center.

100,000 units sold between 1992 and 1994, free New Play Yard offered by firm, call 800-328-7363

In September, another Home and Roam crib collapsed, killing a 13-month old boy.  One month after this first reported death, the CPSC and Baby Trend issued a press release warning consumers of the hazard.  "Urgent Warning on Baby Trend and Baby Express Home and Roam Playpens: Strangulation Risk Cited," read the headline.  Nowhere in the press release was it mentioned that the product was being recalled.  In August 1994, almost a year after the "urgent warning," another Baby Trend crib collapsed killing 8-month old Jared Zalinski*.

The CPSC took five months to issue a press release announcing an official recall of the Baby Trend crib.    INFANT CARRIERS Kolcraft, Graco, Cosco,Evenflo and Playskool have all had hard-handle infant carriers recalled because the carriers' handles unlatched unexpectedly, often hurling infants to the ground and causing injuries that included skull fractures and concussions. Baby Bjorn, a Swedish company known for its high-end soft infant carriers, successfully resisted the CPSC's recall efforts for more than a year by claiming ignorance of Section 15: they didn't know about the CPSC's statute that requires a company to self-report product defects.

Small infants can draw up into a fetal position inside these carriers and slip out of the leg openings, 240,000 recalled.

The U.S. distributor for Baby Bjorn, Regal + Lager,  learned in May 1995 that a 10-day-old baby had slipped through the leg hole of a Baby Bjorn carrier and fractured his skull.  Although the distributor claimed that the incident was attributable to product misuse, Baby Bjorn began manufacturing a new version of the product with smaller leg openings.  A year later, a 16-day old infant fell out of her Baby Bjorn carrier and fractured her skull.  Similar reports accumulated in the following months.  More skull fractures, a concussion, internal bleeding were reported.  All of the babies had slipped through the leg holes of the Baby Bjorn. After several meetings involving the CPSC and Baby Bjorn's U.S. distributors, and one with Baby Bjorn's company's president, Bjorn Jakobson, an agreement was reached to recall the carrier.  By the time the recall notice reached the public and the CPSC had approved the carrier "retro-fit," it was Christmas.  The CPSC held the notice until January 1999, three and a half years after the first child was injured by the Baby Bjorn infant carrier.

INFANT BATH SEATS The CPSC estimates baby bath seat sales to be about a million a year.  The agency learned of the first bath seat drowning in 1983, and by the end of 1994, the death count was up to 18.  Research showed that drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death among children in the U.S., and the Commission asked the industry to begin work on a voluntary bath seat standard.  Manufacturers elected the vice president of quality assurance for Safety 1st, Paul Ware, to chair the standard setting committee.  Ware's company was the dominant player in the bath seat market, and in 1999, he estimated gross sales of the product to be $4-5 million.  Two features of baby bath seats were contributing to the majority of deaths: the size of the leg openings, and suction cups coming off.  Instead of straddling the bath seat's plastic bar, infants could fit both legs through one leg opening, then slip through and drown - a phenomenon called "submarining."  The seat itself may then act to hold the baby underwater.  Suction cups were problematic for two reasons: they came off too easily, and when the bathtub was covered with an anti-skid strip, the suction cups didn't always stick to the bottom of the tub.  Without adequate suction, the bath seat was more likely to tip over with the infant in it.  In April 1999 after five years of work, during which time 43 more infants drowned, at least half of them associated with the Safety 1st bath seat, Ware and his committee finally approved the new safety standards.  Their years of work culminated in a standard that called for no significant structural product changes: the leg openings are just as wide and the suction cups are just as likely come off.   Since bath seats hit the market in 1981, at least 78 babies have drowned while using this product.  Even as the death toll rises, manufacturers like Safety 1st reject the suggestion that their product is hazardous, choosing instead to focus on the premise that most children who drown are left unattended by caregivers. Safety 1st products convey a false sense of security to consumers, thereby indirectly serving as a contributing factor to most deaths related to bath seats.

If the straps on these swings loosen or are unbuckled, a child can become tangled in the straps and strangle, 125,000 sold.

INFANT SWINGS Six-month old Jason* had a cold, and he could breathe more easily sitting up in his Century ‘Lil Napper infant swing.  When he was sick, his mother put him in the infant swing she had used for her first child.  She found him dead on the morning of Nov. 30, 1993, hanging from the Century infant swing, his head and neck entangled in the swing's nylon straps. Between 1990 and 2000, at least two dozen babies were killed by their infant swings.   Graco, the swing brand recommended by the popular baby book, Baby Bargains, recalled 7 million infant swings in the spring of 2000 after 181 babies had been injured and six babies died.  The company's recall press release instructed swing owners to call a toll freeVnumber to request - not a refund or a safer replacement swing - but a "free safety restraint."

Graco isn't the only manufacturer that sold dangerous infant swings.  An additional two million swings were recalled by Century Products, Little Tikes, Carlson Children's Products, Newco, Playskool and Cosco.  HIGH CHAIRS The Hasbro-manufactured Playskool 1-2-3 high chair went on the market in 1993 as one of the most expensive high chairs on store shelves.  The first CPSC Chairman Commendation for Significant Contributions to Product Safety went to the Playskool 1-2-3, and the product was named one of the "Ten Best Products of 1993" by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association.  Within a year of its launch, the 1-2-3 became a best seller . But soon after the product hit store shelves, troubling complaints began to trickle into Hasbro's customer service department.  By the end of 1994, customer service representatives were fielding more than 150 complaints a months.  There were many reported problems.  The chair was collapsing after the legs broke, the incline levers were defective, seat pads were ripping, and height adjusters didn't work properly.

105 injuries associated with Graco's high chair; 860,000 units produced

Yet sales remained strong, and Hasbro continued to manufacture and sell the chair.  By March 1995, the company had recorded 2,483 complaints of defective 1-2-3 high chairs.  Hasbro voluntarily recalled the chair in October 1995.   A second recall was issued 14 months after the first one, but it didn't mention that the chair had already been recalled once for a different problem. Nor did it mention the fact that the company had received more than 10,000 consumer complaints about the chair or that at least 4, 500 chairs had cracked while in use.  By the time the second release was issued, 30 more children had been injured. Graco voluntarily recalled 860,000 of its highchairs in February 2001 after receiving 108 reports that the legs came out of the seat.  The 105 injuries reported included a mild concussion, two broken noses, six cuts requiring stitches, and bumps and bruises.

 

BABY WALKERS The American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Safe Kids Campaign, the Consumer Federation of America, and Consumers Union petitioned the CPSC in 1994 to ban the sale of baby walkers, the product associated with more injuries than any other infant product.  By the end of that year, walker-related emergency room visits rose to 28,000.  Between 1989 and 1994, 11 children died from walker incidents, including drownings, suffocations, and fatal head injuries.  Other children suffered non-fatal skull fractures, concussions, brain hemorrhages, burns and spine fractures.  Seventy-nine percent of the injuries occurred when children tumbled down stairs in the walkers.  Two thirds of walker incidents occur while children are in the same room with their caregiver.   Yet the CPSC won't ban the product outright, and manufacturers like Baby Trend, Cosco, Graco, Kolcraft and Safety 1st continue to sell them.   PLAYPENS Since 1983, the CPSC has received eight reports of toddlers who strangled in  playpens when their pacifier strings or clothing got caught in rivets which protruded from the product.   The agency announced the voluntary recall of more than 9.6 million play yards/playpens in November 1998, warning that the playpens posed a strangulation risk.  According to the press release, the rivets, similar to nut and bolt fasteners,  protruded about one-quarter to one-half inch from the outside top rails and could not be removed.  Playpens included in the recall had been manufactured by Bilt-Rite, Evenflo, Gerry, Graco,Kolcraft, Playskool, Pride-Trimble and Strolee. CONTINUING COMPLAINTS Before issuing recalls on their products, Kolcraft received "more than 3,000" complaints about its car seat/carrier that injured 42 infants; Cosco received "about 3,000" complaints about its tandem stroller that injured 200 babies; Safety 1st received "more than 700" complaints about its bouncing buggy, including 33 reports of injuries, and Graco received "more than 400" reports of children being injured in its stationary entertainer. Cosco has one of the worst recall records in the industry, with an infamous history of making excuses for its products' failures.  Over the past few years the company has recalled 62,000 crib mattresses (12 cases of infant entrapment, including one death), 75,000 toddler bed guardrails (67 cases of entrapment), 150,000 toddler beds (50 entrapments, including one death), 57,000 strollers (3,000 reports of locks failing, 250 reports of strollers unexpectedly collapsing), 580,000 full-size cribs (227 incidents, including 27 entrapments and one death), 355,500 infant swings, and 670,000 car seat/carriers.  In 1998, American Baby asked its readers: "Which products can't you live without?"  Among the winners were three losers which had been recalled shortly after the article was published: the Graco swing with 181 falls and six deaths reported; the Baby Bjorn carrier with 9 falls, and the Evenflo car seat/carrier with 89 injuries.  Contrary to the poll's findings, the parents of these infants would have been much happier  to "live without" these award-winning products. Meanwhile, manufacturers of defective children's products stubbornly resist recalls because CPSC does not hold them responsible for getting defective products back into their warehouses.  When a product is recalled, manufacturers are required to issue a joint press release with the CPSC, specifying why the product has been recalled and what consumers who own it should do.  The language used in the recall press release is negotiated in highly secretive meetings between the CPSC compliance staff, lawyers, epidemiologist and test engineers, and the manufacturer's lawyers, product engineers, and public relations staff.  Virtually every word used in a recall notice has been hashed out and debated.  While the CPSC requires the press release to state how many children have been injured and killed, it is in the manufacturer's best interest to play down the product's hazards.   BEYOND REPAIR Dated August 27, 2001, press releases from the CPSC regarding three products manufactured by Graco bore this note of warning: "Retrofit kit no longer available.  Do not use these products.  Please discard or destroy these products."  The affected items were: 1.  A play tray which had been sold as an accessory for a Graco Tot Wheels II walker before September 1991.  The tray had a soft plastic music button which children had been able to remove.  The small part could be ingested or cause a choking hazard.  Graco had received 14 such reports, including two incidents of near choking. Approximately 11,000 of the Tot Wheels II were believed to be in use by consumers.

Repair kit is no longer available. Do not use this product. Discard or destroy this product.

2. A Graco stroller sold before June 1989.  The stroller had been associated with six incidents of children's fingertip laceration or amputation and one incident of a fractured thumb.  The exposed recline brackets on the strollers could present a hazard to children who put their fingers in the mechanism when the seat was raised by a parent or others.  The designated model names were Travel-Mate, Stroll-A-Bed, Elite, Brougham, Regency, Regency Ltd Premier, and Premier Ltd if they had been manufactured before June 1989, and approximately one million were believed to be in use.  3.  49,000 Graco E-Z Roller baby strollers distributed between January 1982 and April 1983.  The stroller had the potential to entrap tiny fingers in the main metal-folding hinge on each side of the stroller.  Graco had received reports of four incidents in which children had placed their fingers in the hinge on the sides of the stroller while it was being unfolded for use.

The lives of our tiniest and most helpless citizens are placed in jeopardy each time their parents and other caregivers, unaware of the dangers intrinsic in millions of child products, place their children in a defective crib or cradle or bath seat or stroller.  When deaths and injuries result from the use of these products, they find themselves hopelessly entangled in a mountain of red tape generated by giant corporations that fail to adequately test their products and an underfunded, understaffed government agency that has been stripped of the authority and budget it needs to hold manufacturers responsible for these deaths.  So it's no accident that children continue to be injured and killed by defective products which were manufactured specifically for them and marketed specifically to their parents and caregivers.  (*Indicates names were changed to protect grieving families.)

(11/07/01)