A new report shows the number of recalled nursery items has reached its highest level in a decade.
“We’ve been doing this long enough that we can usually identify them when they are coming in the door,” said Liz Lampe, owner of Children’s Orchard in New Berlin.
Lampe’s store buys and sells children’s products like toys, clothes, and furniture. She has noticed more and more items have been coming up for recall so she wasn’t surprised to learn the latest report from the consumer advocacy group Kids in Danger found 2023 had the highest number of recalled nursery items by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the last decade.
“I would say we have seen more,” said Lampe. “We take it really seriously to make sure nothing we buy that has been recalled goes out on our floor. Frankly, it is against the law to sell recalled by the CPSC.”
And a majority of the items under recall involve things babies sleep in.
“Those are the products, you know, that we leave very young children often alone in their cribs, their bassinets, and such, and also there been a lot of new rules in place to strengthen those standards,” said Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, a non-profit consumer advocacy group.
Cowles says there are now tougher federal safety standards around infant sleep products. That leads to more recalls for companies who are not following the guidelines. There were 26 nursery products recalled this year, and nearly half involved sleep. And 32% of all of the recalls done by the CPSC were for children's products.
“So many of the recalls we saw for juvenile products as well as the warnings are based on suffocations. Infant loungers are another thing. So for safe sleep. It's important to remember, it seems counterintuitive that soft is not safe for a baby. You want a firm mattress that they're sleeping on. No extra bedding, no extra padding, no blankets in the sleep environment,” said Cowles.
Kids in Danger warns with so many recalled items, you need to be your own advocate. Check your home for recalled items, but also check to see if an item is recalled before you buy it off the internet or a garage sale or someplace that is not a retail store. Lampe says often the first person to tell a parent their product has been recalled.
“We make sure we reject it and send it back with whoever brought it in and let them know it was recalled,” said Lampe.
You can find out the latest recalls and if your product is recalled by checking the CPSC website here.
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