Crib bumpers caused the deaths of more than two dozen children over 20 years, according to a recent analysis.
Using publicly available databases of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for 1985 through 2005, researchers found that 27 infants ages 1 month to 2 years had suffocated when they became wedged against the padded bumpers or were strangled by a bumper tie around the neck.
Do the bumpers also prevent fatalities?
The researchers are not sure.
Writing in The Journal of Pediatrics, the authors say there were only 25 reported non-fatal crib injuries, with no information about the presence of bumpers. But a review of these cases suggested that they were not serious and might not have been prevented by bumpers.
The researchers concluded that the risk outweighed the benefit.
The authors acknowledge that the study has limitations, especially in the likely underreporting of injuries and fatalities and in the fact that autopsies were performed in various ways and with no consistent protocol. Still, said Dr. Bradley T. Thach, the lead author and a professor of pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis, “Since they can cause death and don’t seem to protect the baby from serious injury, crib bumpers should not be used.”
Jamie Dunn, a spokeswoman for the Juvenile Products Manufacturing Association, said in an e-mail message that the Consumer Product Safety Commission had assured the group that “there was no direct causal connection with properly made traditional crib bumpers and any risk of fatality.”