Crib safety: trade group departs from government recommendations.(Up front: news / trends / advice)

Pediatricians and child-safety experts have long urged parents to clear cribs of stuffed animals, pillows, comforters, and other soft or loose material to prevent infant deaths. But the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA), a trade group, has launched a new publicity campaign suggesting that bedding and toys--the products its members make--pose no risk to babies after all, based on a new government review of crib deaths.

In a notice on its Web site headlined "CPSC Determines Traditional Infant Bedding Does Not Cause Death," the JPMA says that the Consumer Product Safety Commission's health sciences staff concluded that there were "no deaths directly related to the use of traditional crib bumper pads, infant blankets, and stuffed toys in infant cribs." The notice, posted last fall, originally said: "This clarifies confusion over whether suffocation incidents are caused by such products." But once our reporter started asking about the statement, we noticed that it was reworded and the headline about the CPSC replaced with another. Still, the site continues to imply that no deaths have been linked to infant bedding. Amy Chezem, a JPMA spokeswoman, called the CPSC information "great news for JPMA members."

However, the CPSC review did not exonerate bedding as a cause of infant death. A CPSC spokesman said that the agency has not changed its recommendations regarding crib safety.

In November 2003, the JPMA asked the CPSC to review only crib deaths involving suffocation or strangulation, 94 deaths over eight years. Cases involving Sudden Infant Death Syndrome were explicitly excluded. Nearly 2,300 infant deaths were attributed to SIDS in 2002, the most recent data ...