Chicago Heights Parents May Own Products Linked To 90 Baby Deaths

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, IL — Some popular inclined baby sleep products that parents in Chicago Heights already own wouldn’t make it to market under new guidelines approved by federal safety regulators after investigations tied them to as many as 90 accidental deaths of infants.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday tightened its regulations on a range of infant sleep products like baby tents, travel beds and portable bassinets, The Washington Post and others have reported.

They’ll now have to meet the same standards already in place for cribs, bassinets, bedside sleepers and play yards.

The new standards are intended to prevent tragedies that Pennsylvania mom Sara Thompson knows all too well. Her newborn son, Alex, died in a Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play in 2011, and she was among the grieving parents pushing for the new rule regulating all inclined baby sleep products, The Post reported.

In a letter to the product safety commission earlier this year, she wrote that “babies will continue to die” without needed changes, urging the rule to be passed. A Washington Post investigation showed Alex was one of at least 90 babies whose deaths were tied to inclined baby sleep products.

The recent product safety commission vote, in effect, closed a loophole that allowed some products — ones not labeled as cribs or bassinets — to skirt federal regulations.

The product safety commission itself confirmed 21 deaths, and 254 incidents, involving inclined infant sleep products nationally in 2019 and 2020.

Design-related issues in some unregulated products led to some infants rolling over and asphyxiating, children developing respiratory issues and physical deformations after spending extended periods of time in them, according to Consumer Product Safety Commission documents.

The final rule “establishes a category of products called ‘infant sleep products,’ which are all products marketed or intended to provide a sleeping accommodation for an infant up to 5 months of age, and that are not already subject to a mandatory CPSC sleep standard.”

Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Robert Adler said in a statement the vote “ensures that when a product is intended or marketed for sleep, it will indeed be safe for an infant to sleep.”

Devices that claim to help a baby sleep safely in a parent’s bed, baby tents and small sleepers are among the other products that will need federal approval when the rule goes into effect in mid-2022, according to The Post.

An earlier version of the rule that passed in 2019 was more limited, according to The Post. It only sought to regulate incline sleepers, which had been controversial since Fisher-Price introduced the first one in 2009.

Supporters of the broader version that passed by a 3-1 vote among product safety commissioners this week include The Academy of Pediatrics and advocacy groups such as Consumer Reports, according to The Post.