Drop-side cribs on NY senator's hit list

The side rail on his drop-side crib slid off the tracks and trapped his head and neck between the mattress and the malfunctioning side rail. His face pressed against the mattress, the boy suffocated.

"I just don't feel complete anymore," says his mother, Susan Cirigliano of North Bellmore, on New York's Long Island.

Bobby was one of at least 32 infants and toddlers since 2000 who suffocated or were strangled in a drop-side crib, which has a side that moves up and down to allow parents to lift children from the cribs more easily than cribs with fixed sides.

Drop-sides, around for decades and probably slept in by many of today's parents, are suspected in an additional 14 infant fatalities during that time.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates cribs, has warned about the problem. Its chairman, Inez Tenenbaum, has pledged to ban the manufacture and sale of such cribs by the end of the year with a new performance standard that would make fixed-side cribs mandatory. It could be several months into 2011 before becoming effective.

The industry already has started phasing out drop-sides, and big retailers such as Babies "R" Us and Wal-Mart have taken them off sale floors. Yet there are still plenty for sale on the Internet, and that's part of the reason Congress is getting involved.

"There's a great urgency here. We have to make sure that no parent is unaware that drop-side cribs could kill their children," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

She plans to introduce legislation this week to outlaw the manufacture, sale and resale of all drop-side cribs and ban them from day-care centers and hotels. Gillibrand wants to accelerate efforts for a ban, from Congress or the CPSC, and highlight concerns about the cribs to parents who are using them.

"There still are thousands and thousands of children who are sleeping every night in drop-side cribs," she said.

More than 7 million of these cribs have been recalled in five years, often because screws, safety pegs or plastic tracking for the rail can come loose or break. The industry insists that babies are safe in drop-sides that haven't been recalled.

"We believe firmly that when these products are assembled and used properly, they are the safest place to put your child," said Mike Dwyer, executive director of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, which represents over 90 percent of the crib industry.

But when the hardware malfunctions, the drop-side rail can detach partially from the crib. That creates a dangerous "V"-like gap between the mattress and the side rail, where a baby can get caught and suffocate or strangle.

Dwyer says manufacturers have seen cases where parents installed the drop-side improperly, sometimes upside-down, or they have reassembled a crib for a second or third child with some of the screws or other hardware missing.

A ban - by Congress or the CPSC - won't come soon enough for Bobby Cirigliano's parents or his sister, Jennifer, who was 3 when her brother died. She remembers him every day, her parents say. When the family moved to their new house on Long Island, her dad promised to build her a tree house.

"I want it as high as the sky," she told her dad, "because then I can see my little brother."