Witness Testimony Ms. Linda Ginzel Chicago, IL, 60614 Child Product Safety: Do Current Standards Provide Enough Protection? Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection October 6, 2004 10:00 AM My name is Linda Ginzel. I am a mother. I am also a professor at the University of Chicago. My husband, Boaz Keysar, is also a professor. This means that like many parents we rely on childcare. Six years ago, on May 12, 1998, my 16 1/2 month-old son Danny was strangled at his licensed childcare facility in our Chicago neighborhood. There is absolutely no reason for this to ever happen again. Danny’s death was completely preventable. My little boy was killed by a defective children’s product -- a crib --the Playskool Travel-Lite portable crib –where he napped in the afternoons at his childcare home. This crib has hinges in the top rails that allow it to collapse and fold flat for storage. This type of crib is defective because it can collapse unexpectedly while the product is in use. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Danny was not the first baby to die in the Playskool Travel-Lite, he was not the second, he was not the third, and he was not even the fourth child to die. My son, Daniel, was the fifth baby whose neck was caught between the top rails of this crib when it collapsed and strangled him to death. On August 19, 1998 –three months after Danny died- 10-month old William Curran of Fair Haven, New Jersey became this crib’s sixth victim. After we buried our son, my husband and I learned that 1.5 million portable cribs of similar collapsing, top-rail design by five manufacturers have been recalled, but according to the Chicago Tribune (June 15, 1998) over one million may still be in use. As of today, the official death count from these portable cribs stands at 16 children. The most recent victim was killed in March 2004 in rural Wisconsin. How is it possible that my son died in this way? How can such a deadly crib be found in a licensed childcare facility? You should know that just eight days before this crib collapsed and killed my son, his childcare home passed a routine inspection conducted by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Since Danny died, my husband and I have learned a lot about the factors that contributed to our son’s death: ineffective recall and failure to test. Unfortunately, the problem goes far beyond collapsing portable cribs. The CPSC recalls children’s products at a rate of two per week. In 2004 alone, this amounted to over 23 million individual units, not including car seats. Because the CPSC relies largely on asking the media to inform the public, many people remain unaware of the dangers. In the case of the Playskool Travel-lite crib that killed my son, here is what we learned about the ineffective recall and failure to warn the public about this deadly product: It was only after three children died that Kolcraft recalled the Playskool crib. Though the crib was proven deadly, Kolcraft and Hasbro sought to minimize the publicity surrounding the recall and resisted the efforts of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to make the public aware of the hazards. In a 1993 letter, the CPSC reprimanded Kolcraft for failing to provide adequate notice to the public: "The [. . .] thin stock 'poster' went to retailers had many serious shortcomings, in our view. It did not even have the Playskool name on the crib." The letter lists additional shortcomings of Kolcraft's minimal recall efforts and concludes, "This was a very disappointing effort and it is not likely to be an effective public notice mechanism." Despite such failings, Kolcraft continued to resist the CPSC's attempts to warn parents. Kolcraft then sought to conceal the issue by asking the CPSC to purge its files of the CPSC's letter that detailed their egregious conduct. Less that one month after the recall, Kolcraft tried to reduce publicity. They questioned the need for distribution of a video, and tried to justify putting an end to the publicity on the bass of low recall rates being common in the industry. They also objected to the number of videotapes suggested by the CPSC saying that they "did not want the message replayed." By including confidentiality provisions in settlements with other Playskool Travel-lite victims, they further suppressed information about the deadly crib. Hasbro was not involved in the recall. For years, Hasbro did nothing to inform the public, despite its multi billion-dollar ability to reach the public when they want to sell their products. Only after the sixth baby died in August of 1998, and after we sent a letter to Hasbro CEO Alan Hassenfeld asking them to inform registered child care facilities of the recall, did they do so. This is, of course, too little, too late. Hasbro and Kolcraft continue to have the moral and ethical obligation to warn their trusting customers. Yet, eight years after the recall, six babies are dead and thousands of these deadly cribs are still unaccounted for. Hasbro and Kolcraft have failed this ethical test miserably. There is absolutely no reason for another child to die due to the lack of information about unsafe, recalled products. Manufacturers use advertising to reach into our homes everyday when they want to sell us their new products, why can’t they could do the same to retrieve their recalled products? But beyond informing parents and caregivers about recalls, we learned that recalls are only a symptom of the real problem: a lack of adequate pre-market safety testing. Here’s what we learned about the crib that killed our son: The Playskool crib was originally designed by Ed Johnson, a draftsman with a high school education. Kolcraft could not produce documents to show that any safety tests were actually performed. There was no evidence that any safety engineer tested the crib before it was sold. Hasbro did not verify that any testing was conducted. They asked Kolcraft to provide test data but they never received any. Despite putting their Playskool brand name on the crib, Hasbro never tested the product. As a result, Boaz and I founded a nonprofit organization called Kids In Danger dedicated to improving children’s product safety (www.KidsInDanger.org). The immediate focus of our efforts was on educating the public about dangerous children’s products. We believe that people have the right to know that their children could be in danger. This is an area where there is so much to be done that even small efforts can make a big difference in getting the word out to the public and saving lives. Our long-term goal is to convince manufacturers to design safer children’s products and to do pre-market safety tests on their products instead of using our homes and childcare facilities as their testing grounds. We hope that other families will not suffer a tragedy as senseless as the one we have had to endure since the death of our beloved son. We hope that the work we do in Danny’s loving memory will protect the children you love and we hope that you have the will and the courage to help us. Thank you.