Crib Recalls Continue
I’m sure you’ve all see the
waves of crib recalls going on for the past couple of years.
Drop-side cribs, which are in nearly every baby home I’ve
been in, are being demonstrated to be risky to say the least.
Unclear directions, drop-side mechanisms that can wear down and
fail, poor construction, and more have led several watchdog
agencies to press for the ban of drop-side cribs.
Yesterday another wave of recalls was announced – a total of
nine manufacturers, I believe, recalling cribs made within the past
ten years – and the total number of cribs recalled now totals
9 million.
I’ve got a drop-side crib in my
garage, being held for a friend to use in the future, and now
I’m not sure what to do with it. Some manufacturers are
offering kits to “fix” the crib and make it immobile.
But my crib has been assembled and re-assembled almost half a dozen
times, so I worry about the wear and tear put on the whole thing
and how well such a patch kit would work. We never had a problem
with ours, and for that I’m profoundly grateful. But there
have been at least thirty-two deaths due to drop-side cribs; the
catching mechanism malfunctions, separating the side of the crib
and leaving a gap where the babies are hanged or suffocated.
If this is the first you’ve heard of this, read up on it
–
target="_blank">here’s a good place to start.
target="_blank">Here’s a link to the latest recalls,
including photos to help with identification. As I said, some
manufacturers offer a patch kit, while a few are offering a few
bucks of “store credit” towards a new crib. Legislation
banning drop-side cribs in the US seems inevitable before the
year’s end, and I’m wondering what to do with my crib
now. I don’t want to throw it in the landfill, but
can’t in good conscience even pass it on to charity, even if
it's not legally declared broken. As far as I can tell, my crib's
not recalled - our drop-side works on a track, which makes it
impossible to be separated at the bottom the way the defective ones
are. But I'm not sure I'm ready to pass it on to someone when the
information's still coming in on this. At the same time, I'm not
willing to blindly panic and throw out something if it works
perfectly well.
Any thoughts out there?
0 comments:
Post a Comment