Safety standards for juvenile products under scrutiny

I recently spent several days at a series of meetings (23 in all) held by ASTM-International on safety standards for juvenile products. From cradles to cribs, voluntary standards for juvenile products are developed by ASTM committees made up mostly of manufacturers, testing laboratories, government agencies, and consumer groups.

As you can imagine, consumer organizations—Consumers Union, Kids in Danger, the Consumer Federation of America and Keeping Babies Safe, among others—are outnumbered by manufacturing groups, whose members often make it difficult to develop the strongest safety standards. Still, we put up a good fight.

Developing standards can be an exacting and tedious process. Engineers (like me) can get bogged down in long discussions about proper sentence structure or converting metric to English measurement units. Sometimes that delays us from tackling the more substantive issues, like how to improve a product so it doesn't hurt kids. The juvenile-products committees meet only twice a year, so working out a new standard can take years. When a standard is finally passed, manufacturers can still choose not to follow it—remember, it's voluntary.

That could all change. The recently passed Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act requires the Consumer Products Safety Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of the voluntary standards for 12 categories of juvenile products: bassinets and cradles, cribs (including portable cribs), play yards, toddler beds, highchairs (including booster seats and hook-on chairs), infant carriers, bath seats, safety gates and enclosures, walkers, stationary activity centers, strollers and swings. The CPSC may then either adopt the voluntary standards as written, or make them tougher. The agency plans to start with baby walkers and bath seats, then develop regulations for two additional categories every six months.

Before the CPSC reviews voluntary ASTM standards to determine whether they should become mandatory, we think it's important that the current voluntary standards be as strong and effective as possible. Anyone who has an interest in developing standards can join ASTM International and help. You don't need to be an engineer, just someone who cares about safety. Parents whose children have been hurt or killed by unsafe products are often the strongest advocates for improved safety standards.—Don Mays