Injury Prevention and Product Safety

Transition Plan for Secure Families

Injury Prevention and Product Safety

Unintentional injuries are the number one cause of death in children ages 1-19, and the fifth leading cause of death for newborns and infants under one. Pediatricians look to the guidance of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to protect children from injuries, sleep-related deaths, and other risks.

Finalize strong safety standards for infant sleep products. CPSC should finalize a protective product safety standard that ensures that any product designed for infant sleep meet the requirements for cribs, play yards, or bassinets before it enters the marketplace. This would protect against the proliferation of dangerous novel products, such as how the Rock ‘n Play inclined sleeper became ubiquitous before recalls over its major risk of infant death.

Remove padded crib bumpers from the market. The CPSC should finalize a mandatory safety standard that prevents the sale of dangerous padded crib bumpers, which pose a suffocation hazard and have no place in a safe sleep environment.

Prevent furniture and TV tip-over injuries and deaths by promulgating a protective standard to prevent tip-overs. The most effective solution to prevent injuries and deaths from furniture tip-overs is for the CPSC to strengthen the stability performance requirements in the relevant safety standards.

Protect children from liquid nicotine poisoning. The CPSC should place a significant emphasis on enforcing the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act and removing products that fail to meet the law’s clear requirement for flow restrictors on liquid nicotine containers.

Improve CPSC transparency and communication to consumers. Strengthen the CPSC’s ability to proactively protect children from dangerous products through strong mandatory standards, transparent sharing of information around product-related risks, and coordinated communication to parents and caregivers on emerging hazards and recalls.

Keep children safe in automobiles. NHTSA should take regulatory steps to improve the ease of using child restraints in vehicles, which can help expand installation and compliance. NHTSA should also address racial and ethnic disparities in child restraint usage and consider ways to encourage the provision of free or low-cost car seats to low-income and under-served communities in order to expand the use of this life-saving equipment. NHTSA should also promulgate a final side-impact test rule for child passenger safety systems.

Continue the CDC’s work to keep children safe from injuries and violence. The CDC plays a critical role in preventing all kinds of injury and violence to children, as well as in tracking and maintaining data, such as through the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) and the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). Pediatricians and researchers rely on these databases. The CDC should also place an emphasis on preventing childhood drownings and unintentional injuries. Both the CDC’s prevention programs and data functions should be robustly funded and expanded.