Dr. Rebecca Bell, vice president of the American Academy of Pediatrics Vermont Chapter, said a proposed bill outlawing baby bumpers is supported by years of warnings from public health officials about the suffocation dangers the pads pose.
“Crib bumpers are a product that actually just shouldn’t be sold at all,” Bell told members of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. “They contribute to an unsafe sleep environment.”
Bell was testifying in favor of S.65, a bill that prohibits “the manufacture, sale or transfer of baby bumper pads in this state.”
The legislation defines baby bumpers as “a pad of nonmesh material” that is “designed to rest directly above the mattress in a crib, or to run the circumference of a crib or along the length of an interior side of a crib.”
Bell, who is a pediatric critical care physician at University of Vermont Medical Center, acknowledged that baby bumpers are a longtime, commonly used crib accompaniment. But she said the risks to infant health are clear.
“If they have anything near their face, even if it’s not on their face, they start to breathe recycled air, and that can actually cause them to asphyxiate,” Bell said.
In other cases, the pads can fall on a baby’s face, “or the strings that hold them can fall down, and they can get tangled in that,” she said.
Bell produced a timeline showing that authorities have been warning about baby bumpers since at least 2007.
That year, a study in the Journal of Pediatrics said 27 accidental deaths were attributable to bumper pads between 1985 and 2005. There were another 25 nonfatal injuries, and the report found that “all retail bumpers had hazardous properties.”
Other studies and warnings have followed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says parents shouldn’t use crib bumpers or other soft bedding in infant sleep areas, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a 2017 statement saying “the public should stop using padded crib bumpers” because they “do nothing more than contribute to the deadly clutter in many of our nation’s cribs.”
Bell echoed other experts in advocating for a “bare is best” approach to outfitting a crib.
“Having an infant in her own sleep space, on her back, with nothing else in the crib – no blankets, no pillows, no crib bumpers – is the safest way to prevent unsafe sleep deaths,” she said.
She also told legislators that improved crib standards have eliminated the need for padded protection.
Vermont hospitals have worked with state officials to educate new parents. But only Maryland and Ohio have banned crib bumpers at this point, and Bell said it’s still common for retailers to promote the product online and in stores.
“We’re trying to tell parents one thing, and then they’re seeing another,” Bell said. “Parents are shocked to hear that nobody recommends these.”
The Health and Welfare Committee did not take any immediate action on S.65. But one committee member, Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, indicated that he may support a ban.
“The idea of parents saying, ‘If they’re that bad, they would be illegal,’ is for me the strongest argument for making them illegal,” McCormack said. “Because there is that sense of trust – that someone’s watching the store.”
