Staff members at the Consumer Product Safety Commission have recommended new safety rules for infant rockers, warning that the popular products were linked to 11 deaths from 2011 to 2022.
The recommended safety rules, which were sent to CPSC commissioners Wednesday are meant to prevent infants from suffocating by making rockers firmer and flatter.
The rockers would be required to pass stability and other safety tests, seek to prevent strangulation from hanging straps and include prominent warning labels emphasizing the hazards associated with rockers.
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Parents would be urged not to allow babies to sleep in them or put soft bedding in them that could cause suffocation.
The rockers were associated with 88 injuries including strangulation and cases where infants hurt their heads after rockers tipped over, CPSC staffers said. Nine of the 11 deaths mentioned in Wednesday’s report, happened when infants were placed in the products for napping or sleeping, CPSC staff members said.
“We have to make these as foolproof as possible — you need to make it so that it’s almost impossible to use in an unsafe way,” said Dr. Rachel Moon, who leads the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome task force for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
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The CPSC’s four commissioners are scheduled to meet Oct. 4 to decide whether to adopt the recommendations.
The CPSC staff report estimated that nearly 570,000 infant rockers are sold every year and that it could cost manufacturers about $80,000 to redesign each model according to the new requirements.
A federal law signed last year prohibited sleepers for infants with inclines greater than 10 degrees NBC reported.
The change is intended to reduce the risk of positional asphyxiation, among other hazards. The CPSC staff proposal does not address the incline of rockers.