New data from CPSC suggests increase in injuries from juvenile products

Today CPSC released its 2010 Nursery Product Report. The report looks at injuries and deaths in nursery products from 2009. The report cites 77,300 injuries involving nursery products that required a trip to the emergency room. This is an increase of around 21% from last year. The rate does fluctuate year to year, but this is a particularly high increase. Injuries in cribs rose by about 27% from 11,500 to 14,600. CPSC says the increase could be due to technical issues, but their staff (and KID!) will be carefully reviewing the data to determine if there are product related issues leading to the increase. Infant carriers and car seats (outside of their use in cars), cribs and strollers were the top three categories, accounting for most of the injuries.

CPSC gets death data from different sources, and only provides averages over a three year period. The data also lags behind injury data, so the average number of deaths from 2005-2007 was 88 a year, with 60 of those in sleep environments such as cribs (36), bassinets (14) and play yards (10).

CPSC notes that the deaths and injuries, while involving a product, may not always be caused by product defects, but by other factors such as extra bedding. Check out KID's safe sleep tips or CPSC's new video for more information on creating a safe sleep environment.

The new database that launches in March 2011 will provide additional injury data to study along with this emergency room data.