Baby Bath Seats Give Parents False Sense of Safety:
HOW MANY DEATHS WILL IT TAKE………….?

In August of 2000 a coalition of consumer groups petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission, (CPSC), to ban baby bath seats. At that time approximately 60 deaths had been identified. The group’s request was for a ban on this product because they felt the product encourages childcare givers to leave the baby alone in the bathtub.

Recently, Keeping Babies Safe (KBS) has learned that there are now 119 deaths involving baby bath seats. This is nearly double the number of deaths from 2000 when they filed the petition to ban baby bath seats. This has caused Keeping Babies Safe to ask, “How many deaths will it take before the federal government takes action?“

Baby bath seats (and products called bath rings) are intended to assist in bathing infants by holding the infant in a sitting position in a full size bathtub. These products usually have suction cups to hold them in place in the bathtub and a plastic seat with leg openings to secure the baby in a sitting position while being bathed. With a bath ring, the baby sits directly on the tub surface or on mat attached to the legs of the bath ring.

CPSC did proceed with an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in August 2001. In 2003 the CPSC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to establish a mandatory standard for baby bath seats. In the meantime, the only remaining manufacturer came up with a radical new design that allowed the bath seat to be attached to the side of the tub by a plastic clamp. The product would no longer rely upon suction cups to hold the bath seat in place. Suction cups have been shown to be very unreliable over time. ASTM began working upon a voluntary standard for baby bath seats, and since the child products industry was developing a voluntary standard, CPSC ceased all of their work on this product.

Drownings typically occur when the infant tips over, climbs out of, or slides through the product. In most, but not all cases, the child is left unattended for a brief time by the parent or caregiver. This "sense of security" promotes the idea that a child could be left alone in the bath for "just a minute."

Caregivers using bath seats prepare baths with deeper water and are more likely to leave a child unattended. There is a false sense of safety that is propagated by having a mechanical aid to "help" to hold a slippery baby upright.

In October 2005, while attending an ASTM standards committee meeting, KBS volunteer Lee Baxter, learned that there had been the first fatality in the newly designed, clamp to the side of the tub, bath seat that seems to comply with the new ASTM voluntary standard. A 10-month-old baby boy was left in his bath seat for “a few minutes” while his mother cleaned up the food mess that necessitated the baby’s bath. The mother started using the bath seat when the infant was six months old and never had a problem. She had no reason to believe the seat would come loose while she tidied up the mess.

Lee Baxter, former CPSC, Western Regional Director, explains, “I have always been proud of my service with CPSC. Deaths and injuries have been greatly reduced for many different kinds of consumer products and I know that the work I did contributed directly to those reductions. I am now feeling a sense of shame that CPSC and its staff are not doing anything more than tallying the ongoing and growing numbers of deaths involving bath seats.”

Keeping Babies Safe will be rallying our coalition of consumer groups to once again petition CPSC to take action to ban baby bath seats. Joining KBS are the Consumer Federation of America, The Drowning Prevention Foundation, the Intermountain Injury Control Research Center, the California Coalition for Children’s Safety and Health, the California Drowning Prevention Network, The Contra Costa County Childhood Injury Prevention Coalition, the Greater Sacramento SAFE KIDS Coalition, and Kids in Danger.