(copy of post on several pages) Canada Bans Baby Walkers

Not to defend these walkers, as I can full well appreciate the inherrant danger in them, but…

If 85% of the accidents with them involve stairs, might it be a case of parental inattention that is actually to blame? Having a baby in a walker is no reason to not pay attention to the baby or to be able to ignore such obvious dangers as an unrestricted set of stairs.

When my children were little, we put a baby gate across the mouth of the stairs to prevent the wee ones from taking the tumble (as a child I took a couple of nasty rides down the basement stairs, probably what is wrong with me now, yes?) When the mother of my oldest displayed innattention towards keeping the gate secured, I took a couple of 12 penny nails and made sure it stayed in place (nails are cheap, holes can be patched later, and the inconvenience of having to step over it seemed small to me when compared to what could have happened).

With the birth of my younger two I did something similar in the house I am in now by securing a gate across the doorway to the kitchen (all kinds of bad things in there!) which kept my younger babies fenced into the back of the house.

Again, I am not saying Canada is wrong for banning these. But at what point d we switch from blaming an innanimate object (or other 3rd party) for mistakes which are made by the responsible persons?

Dad — I posted on another board about this same issue also.

Yes, of course you watch your children. Two points however: (1) none of us is omniscient or omnipotent, and no matter how closely we watch there are slip-ups. (2) *Part* of watching is not giving them access to things that are known to be dangerous.

You gated your stairs and nailed the gate. OK, that works when you have only toddlers and tall adults in the house. If you also have intermediate-age children or short adults, got a problem.
If you use a latching gate and you have young children, elementary age, you can be positive that sooner or later one of them will unlock the gate and either forget to close it or “Mom, I was *just* running up for a second.”
So you exercise the usual parental yelling and you watch like a hawk. But you also don’t give the kid wheels to roll down the stairs.

85% of accidents involved stairs — that leaves 15% or 150 per year that didn’t. That’s a lot of kids in the ER who didn’t need to be there.
Multiply by 10, equivalent in US would be 1500 non-stairs — enough to cause concern?? I’ve heard major national new breaks and bans of a novelty toy at restaurants because of three or four injuries, much less 1500.

A small informal survey — I posted this on this board, where there are around 100 active users, all very concerned and involved parents. In one day there was a response from a mother whose child was injured in a baby walker. This does match the 1 in 100 to 150 chance of injury that I worked out. That is just too high a risk factor for little benefit.

Why tempt fate at all by using a baby walker for your child, when it is proven to cause injury, and there’s no proof of any benefit to the child whatsoever, in fact, studies to the contrary?

It seems to me it is just easier for the parent who cannot be bothered to watch his or her child. It is a plastic, dangerous, babysitter on wheels, known to cause injury, not only by falling down stairs. It is warned against by the AAP, and now banned in Canada.

Dad said, “If 85% of the accidents with them involve stairs, might it be a case of parental inattention that is actually to blame? Having a baby in a walker is no reason to not pay attention to the baby or to be able to ignore such obvious dangers as an unrestricted set of stairs.”

Putting a baby in a walker itself is a case of parental inattention.

Here’s what the AAP has to say:

AAP Fact Sheet
Baby Walkers are Dangerous!

Baby walkers send more than 14,000 children to the hospital every year.
34 children have died since 1973 because of baby walkers.
Children in baby walkers can:

Roll down the stairs - which can cause broken bones and head injuries. This is how most children get hurt in baby walkers.

Get burned - a child can reach higher when in a walker. A cup of hot coffee on the table, pot handles on the stove, a radiator, fireplace, or space heater are all now in baby’s reach.

Drown - a child can fall into a pool, bathtub, or toilet while in a walker.

Be poisoned - reaching high objects is easier in a walker.

Pinch fingers and toes - by getting them caught between the walker and furniture.

There are no benefits to baby walkers.

You may think a walker can help your child learn to walk. But, in fact, walkers do not help children walk sooner. Also, some babies may get sore leg muscles from spending too much time in a walker. Most walker injuries happen while adults are watching. Parents and other caregivers simply cannot respond quickly enough. A child in a walker can move more than 3 feet in 1 second! Therefore, walkers are never safe to use, even with close adult supervision. Make sure there are no walkers at home or wherever your child is being cared for. Child care facilities should not allow the use of baby walkers.

If your child is in child care at a center or at someone else’s home, make sure there are no walkers.

Throw out your baby walkers!

Try something just as enjoyable but safer, like:

“Stationary walkers” - have no wheels but have seats that rotate and bounce.
Play pens - great safety zones for children as they learn to sit, crawl, or walk.
High chairs - older children often enjoy sitting up in a high chair and playing with toys on the tray.
As of July 1, 1997, new safety standards were implemented for baby walkers. Walkers are now made wider so they cannot fit through most doorways and can stop at the edge of a step. But these new walker designs will not prevent all injuries from walkers. They still have wheels, so children can still move fast and reach higher.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association for Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) have called for a ban on the manufacture and sale of baby walkers with wheels.

Keep your child safe - throw away your baby walker.

I agree with the Canadian ban. I’m surprised that here in the litigious US of A we haven’t also banned them.

With everything you need some sort of benefit vs. risks. No doubt things like baseballs and skates are dangerous too but the benefits of exercise are very high. I would guess walkers provide little actual exercise to the toddler— motion yes, exercise no. I also think that in some kids they could encourage toe walking and so on.

While I agree that stairs are the main reason they are dangerous (though there are others), the parent not watching isn’t the main cause the main cause is the object moving faster than it should. I think they are used to passively entertain the baby, and the baby should not be in a high chair on wheels that could head anywhere.

—des

I am not saying that an avoidance of walkers is bad, etc. I see that the AAP makes the distinction between those that roll and those that do not. ALl I am saying is that perhaps the situation is being magnified a bit to make the point.

According to US statistic, trauma due to falls is 6th on the list in order of frequency as a cause of death in toddlers and 4th for hospital visits. They do not break this down by the reason for the fall, so walkers would be a small percentage of this. Cars kill and injured significantly more babies than walkers ever have.

A more dangerous threat than walkers are pools, including the backyard portables that are about a foot deep that are so common in families with small children. There are twice as many drownings as there are deaths from falls (I wonder how many pools there are out there compared to walkers…) Indeed, with the exception of motor vehicle accidents, the list of leading causes of infant deaths all come down to parents not being on their toes (drowning, burns. poisonings, firearms, falls) to some extent or another.

As far as the AAP’s statistics… If 34 kids dying as a direct result of walker falls since 1973 (about 1 a year) is reason to ban something such as a walker, then what does that say about the pertussis vaccination which has killed 600 infants in the period 1988-2000 (36 per year) or the HepB which has killed 575 from 1991-2000 (57 per year)? (Recall that the list of adverse events associated with vaccines is deliberately understated to reduce criticism of the mandatory policy.) For that matter, Shaken Baby Syndrome kills several dozen children each year. and that is something that the parents should have far more control over than an accidental fall.

Again, not meaning to be contentious about this, but I think sometimes countries or groups make something seem far more serious than it really is in order to acomplish something. Walkers are unsafe not simply because they are poorly designed. They become unsafe when parents use them in dangerous settings (the second floor of a house with an open staircase, on the first floor where stairs to the cellar are left unsecured, on porches which are elevated) and/or do not keep an eye on what the little rugrat is doing.

We used to have a legal standard in this country which said if something bad has happened, how much responsibility should the involved parties assume for their contribution to the occurance (most typically applied in car wreck and work-related injuries, but applicable in this scenario as well). Somehow we have moved away from that to the point where we push blame on inanimate objects (or better yet, the deepest pocket).

Hi Dad,

Yours is an excellent reply, and you have brought up some good points.

Dad wrote:

” As far as the AAP’s statistics… If 34 kids dying as a direct result of walker falls since 1973 (about 1 a year) is reason to ban something such as a walker, then what does that say about the pertussis vaccination which has killed 600 infants in the period 1988-2000 (36 per year) or the HepB which has killed 575 from 1991-2000 (57 per year)? (Recall that the list of adverse events associated with vaccines is deliberately understated to reduce criticism of the mandatory policy.) For that matter, Shaken Baby Syndrome kills several dozen children each year. and that is something that the parents should have far more control over than an accidental fall. ”

Your comparison regarding the number of children dying from baby walkers vs. the number of children dying from the pertussis and HepB vaccinations scare the daylights out of me, as it should ALL PARENTS. I know I need say no more on that topic, for you are far more the expert there. But I will say that it is downright sinful how uninformed parents are when they take their precious baby in to the pediatrician, for the mandatory vaccinations, and the (high paid) doctor doesn’t see fit to enlighten them about the risks involved BEFORE the shots are administered.

But… your analogy regarding Shaken Baby Syndrome illustrates Victoria’s point to a tee. Canada has banned these baby walkers, and hopefully, we are not far behind. They should have been banned years ago, according to the AAP. I have to say that I agree with this. I posted on the other board why I got rid of my baby walker. (My oldest daughter didn’t have one, but the little one did.) I came home from work one afternoon, and my babysitter had my little girl in the walker, in the yard, on the cement part, with the walker itself tied to the fence. I got rid of the walker that same night.

As parents, we are not perfect. One little second out of our lives, we could just turn our head, and a disaster could occur, one that we could not have prevented anyway, and we cannot turn back the hands of time. I had to work, and my baby was in the care of another, who, by the way, was not negligent; in fact, on the whole, she was a great nanny for my daughters. As another poster said, why tempt fate, when there are so many other choices to entertain your baby, that aren’t dangerous? I can see that you are playing the devil’s advocate here, which is fine, but we are talking about babies. One dead baby is one too many for me, especially if it occurred because of an article of entertainment the child was using that is known to be dangerous.

It has always interested me that, to obtain a drivers’ license, one must first pass a written test, to prove that one has the necessary knowledge, then one must take classes to learn more, and then take a driving test, to make certain they should be behind the wheel of a moving vehicle at all, which is too often a weapon in itself. I do not disagree with this policy; I think it is necessary, and it still isn’t foolproof. But, to put a child on this earth, what qualities must one possess? There are no mandatory classes to take, no tests to pass. Almost anyone can have a child. And back to Victoria’s point, that is why the ban on baby walkers is needed. Yes, you watch your children, I watch mine, she watches hers, but not everybody is as conscientious as we (and most parents) are. Even all the good intentions in the world will not stop an accident that happens in a split second, that didn’t have to happen at all, simply because the child was in a baby walker.

For anyone not taking this as seriously as they should…

From the Toronto Star:

Canada bans sale of `dangerous’ baby walkers
Tied to 2,000 injuries in 12-year span `Many parents don’t know the risks’

BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA—Canada has become the first country in the world to ban infant walkers in a strong signal to parents about the dangers posed by these once popular products.

Health Canada announced yesterday it had imposed an immediate prohibition on the sale, resale, advertisement and importation of baby walkers into the country.

“Canadians must know about the dangers posed to infants through the use of baby walkers,” Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew said in announcing the move.

The prohibition also applies to the sale of second-hand baby walkers at flea markets or garage sales. The government is urging anyone who has a baby walker to dismantle it and throw it in the garbage.

Pediatricians and child-safety advocates endorsed the ban, which they have long called for. But now they worry about the fate of thousands of walkers tucked away in closets that might be passed down among family members. Safe Kids Canada, an advocacy group, estimated last year there are 500,000 walkers in the country.

“Many, many parents simply don’t know that wheeled walkers are dangerous … that’s why there’s so many,” said Dr. Robin Walker, an Ottawa pediatrician and president-elect of the Canadian Pediatric Society.

“Clearly there’s a big gap in public education,” he said.

That’s why pediatricians are calling on government to back its ban with strict enforcement and an ambitious education campaign to get the word out.

The wheeled walkers were meant for children who can sit up but can’t yet walk on their own. But experts say babies simply don’t have the skills, reflexes or cognitive abilities needed to use the walkers safely.

Between 1990 and 2002, Health Canada estimates that almost 2,000 children were injured in accidents involving walkers. However Safe Kids Canada says the accident rate is even higher and estimates some 1,000 babies a year are injured.

“There are many dangers. The worst accidents happen when children fall down stairs. Even a gate doesn’t prevent that because there’s enough momentum in these things that they can go straight through,” Walker said.

In those accidents, children have suffered multiple fractures, internal injuries, concussions and even skull fractures, he said. In other cases, the walkers have put children within reach of dangers such as poisons in cupboards, electrical outlets and pots on the stove.

There’s no evidence either that the walkers actually encourage babies to walk, Walker said. “They may actually get in the way of it because the muscular development they encourage is not the same as walking.”

Most big retail stores have not stocked walkers since a voluntary ban went into effect in 1989. However, federal inspectors have noticed a growing number of street vendors and small retailers selling the products.

One local mother who purchased a walker for her 1-year-old daughter thinks the ban is misguided, the Star’s Gabe Gonda reports.

“I totally disagree with it,” said the 33-year-old Woodbridge woman, who didn’t want her name used. “It gave my daughter so much independence, so much strength. It allowed her to feel like she wasn’t alone and it allowed me a sense of security.”

The woman bought the walker during a trip to Buffalo, N.Y.

Here’s a good book on Dangerous baby products. It is heinous that the companies that make the products already know the potential hazards, but don’t recall the product until babies are dead.

Book takes unsafe baby products, firms to task

By Jayne O’Donnell, USA TODAY

It’s No Accident: How Corporations Sell Dangerous Baby Products

By Marla Felcher
Common Courage Press
281 pp

After Marla Felcher watched her husband help carry the tiny casket of a friend’s 17-month-old son, she vowed to do something about it.

What she did was write a book that takes children’s product makers to task for often knowingly selling products that could injure and kill children, such as Danny Keysar, one of six children who died in a Playskool portable crib.

It’s No Accident: How Corporations Sell Dangerous Baby Products is most compelling when it tells the tales of the victims, using government and court documents chilling in their detail. Though many of the cases date to the early 1990s, they illustrate the lengths companies will go to avoid acknowledging that their products can be dangerous — and how product-safety law sometimes protects companies more than consumers.

Felcher devotes much space to Cosco, including a Justice Department lawsuit over its failure to report entrapments in its toddler bed and guard rails. She reports that a 1996 settlement meant Cosco never had to answer allegations that it sold the recalled beds in Mexico but said they were destroyed.

Graco is pictured just as negatively. Felcher recounts case after case of parents putting infants in the Graco Convert-a-Cradle in the early 1990s, only to return to find them suffocated in the bottom corner. Felcher says the company blamed parents for not supervising their children in the cradle, in which 14 infants died. But Graco’s own engineers had found the head-to-toe swinging could shift babies into a corner where they might not be able to breathe.

The book benefits from Felcher’s persistence and patience. It has meticulous footnotes and references to Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) documents that took up to a year to obtain. Federal law requires that CPSC documents be requested under the Freedom of Information Act and that the agency must get a company’s permission to release the files. Files on an active investigation — which can last for years — are not released until the case is closed.

Felcher, a freelance writer and university professor, will not be mistaken for a disinterested party. She is unrelenting in her criticism of companies’ profit motives, and the rants can wear on a reader.

The book also can be as dry as a civics textbook when it covers the intricacies of consumer-product law.

But real life — and death — stories make her book difficult to put down and easily forgiven for shortcomings. With so much information that manufacturers don’t want known, it should be required reading for parents of young children.

I thought this quote from a parent was interesting:
“I totally disagree with it,” said the 33-year-old Woodbridge woman, who didn’t want her name used. “It gave my daughter so much independence, so much strength. It allowed her to feel like she wasn’t alone and it allowed me a sense of security.”

This is the kind of absurd idea that some people have where they put adult ideas in babies or children’s minds. It is also the type of thinking that causes trouble. She bemoans her daughter’s loss of independence when you can’t really have the kids use these unsupervised. In fact, they maybe have to be MORE surpervised.

The ban is good imo. However, that said there are many other dangers out there, as Dad rightly points out. Seems like a good start for preventable accidents though.

—des

… baby walkers can possibly even delay a child’s development, as well as be a serious danger. Read on:

The Bad Baby Development Device?

Many parents use baby walkers to give their their children exercise. Unfortunately new research from of New York at Buffalo and Case Western Reserve University indicates that rather than helping these devices may slow the development of infants, particularly in their development of skills like sitting upright, crawling and walking.

According to Roger V. Burton, PhD, head of the research team, “Newer-style walkers, which have large trays that prevent infants from seeing their moving feet and from grasping objects around them, lead to greater delays in physical and mental development”.

The researchers studied the mental and physical development of 109 predominately white infants from the New York area. About half had never used a walker, about a third used newer-style walkers, and the remainder used older-style walkers that allowed them to see their moving feet grab at objects around them.

The infants in the study were first tested at either 6, 9, or 12 months of age, and then re-tested three months later, using a scaled model used to measure physical and mental development. Parents then gave feedvback on when the children achieved developmental milestones like sitting, crawling, and walking.

Those babies who used newer-style sat upright, crawled, and walked later than infants who had never used a walker. Infants who used older -style walkers learned to sit and walk at about the same age as the no-walker group, but they learned to crawl at about the same age as the children who used the newer-style walkers.

On the developmental tests side, infants who used newer-style walkers had the lowest scores on physical and mental development. On the physical development tests, infants who used older-style walkers received lower scores than the no-walker group, but the differences were not statistically different.

On mental performance, those who used older-style walkers scored somewhere between the no-walker and newer-style walker groups.

The researchers think that use of newer-style walkers leads to physical developmental delays because the walkers’ large trays restrict infants’ view of their moving legs, depriving them of visual feedback that would help them learn how their bodies move through space. Baby walkers also prevent infants from exploring and grabbing at things around them, which is critical to their early mental development.

“Although in some infants the effect of walker use on mental development was measurable for as long as 10 months after initial use, it is likely that normal infants who use newer-style walkers will catch up to their no-walker peers when they walk and are no longer restricted by being put into a walker. When the danger factor is considered in conjunction with the developmental data presented by our study, the risks seem to outweigh any possible benefits of early walker exposure,” said Burton.

According to the researchers, in the United States 70 to 90 percent of parents of one-year-olds use baby walkers. Why these thing have not been banned is somewhat of an oddity in a country where consumer rights are paramount. This is even more unbelivable when you consider that in 1994 a report from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission cited baby walkers as responsible for more injuries than any other product for children!

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19990912132432data_trunc_sys.shtml

What about bicycles, tricycles, wading pools, cars, electrical outlets, refrigerators, telephone cords, horses, trees, roller blades, and the family dog? How many children are injured, maimed, or killed because of those listed items? How many injuries per year are considered *acceptable*? Below what number must a product have in order to be considered *safe*? What other dangers lurk in our garages and backyards?

Guest wrote: “What about bicycles, tricycles, wading pools, cars, electrical outlets, refrigerators, telephone cords, horses, trees, roller blades, and the family dog? How many children are injured, maimed, or killed because of those listed items? How many injuries per year are considered *acceptable*? Below what number must a product have in order to be considered *safe*? What other dangers lurk in our garages and backyards?”

You are absolutely correct, who knows what hidden dangers are lurking around every corner, ready to harm our precious children? So why not ban one that we absolutely KNOW is dangerous, is KNOWN to cause harm, injury and even death, and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever for any parent in their right mind nowadays to use one, in fact, all to the contrary.

Well your argument is that if it is dangerous then logical it should be banned as that is the same thinking as to why walkers were banned in Canada.

But that is NOT the argument. Ruling out the trees, and other
natural things that could be dangerous we are left with bicycles, roller bikes, and tricycles (these provide useful exercise, entertainment, etc and bikes are a form of transportation). Cars are a form of transportation. Wading pools offer cooling, recreation, etc. Dogs and horses are members of the family, teach responsibility, kindness, etc.
When you judge safety of anything you have to take the positives and hope they outweigh the negatives, and that is mostly the case.
It is NOT the case with walkers. Parents are lolled into a false sense of security thinking that the toddler is safely entertained, the toddler would get more exercise and development without them, and they pose risks that are not particularly foreseen. One could argue whether one or another of your list meets the criterion of the benefits outweighing the risks but one couldn’t argue all of them.

Think of it like medication. We know that aspirin is not always safe but it is particularly useful. One could not argue this with crystal meth. It’s not the same for sure but it provides a kind of analogy.

—des

[quote=”Anonymous”]What about bicycles, tricycles, wading pools, cars, electrical outlets, refrigerators, telephone cords, horses, trees, roller blades, and the family dog? How many children are injured, maimed, or killed because of those listed items? How many injuries per year are considered *acceptable*? Below what number must a product have in order to be considered *safe*? What other dangers lurk in our garages and backyards?[/quote]

Why ban them? Why not slap on a warning sticker to tell parents that the walkers have no benefit but may harm their child?

At what point does a product’s *danger-rating* outweigh its *education-rating* or *recreation-rating* and warrant a government ban? And more importantly, WHO gets to decide that?

I also I forgot to add peanut butter and hot dogs to the list of dangerous items that should be banned.

What a thoughtful, intelligent response, des!

As for the “Guest”, peanut butter sandwiches indeed. Looks like we are descending into Trollville again.

One more thing - who “gets to ban them”. At the risk of being redundant, since it is already everywhere in this thread, the American Academy of Pediatrics has long called for a ban on baby walkers, and recommend NEVER using one. Don’t you trust them? Or do they have some ulterior motive or hidden agenda we don’t know about, other than to warn and educate parents, so their children will be safe? And don’t tell me all parents are knowledgeable/educated enough already to make their own decision *in this case* because unfortunately that’s just not true.

guest wrote: “At what point does a product’s *danger-rating* outweigh its *education-rating* or *recreation-rating* and warrant a government ban? And more importantly, WHO gets to decide that? ”

In the case of baby walkers? Very strong, well-documented (read this thread) danger-rating, vs. zero recreation/education-rating, in fact, to the contrary, baby walkers can actually delay your baby’s development. I would think that warrants a government ban, and I don’t care who makes the *final* decision to ban these “wheels of death”.

The “who gets to ban things” question COULD be a very reasonable and in fact important discussion. There is always a fine balance between individual freedom and group solidarity, between allowing choice and protecting people (of all ages) from dangers.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time that this question comes up, it is not an effort at a reasoned discussion but a knee-jerk reaction from a person who has a political agenda.

Yes, what a lot of people are trying to express here is the question of cost-benefit analysis and of risk analysis — two huge questions which safety engineers and medical people among others spend their whole lives on.

Some of the issues: everything in life involves risk. Breathing involves risk if you happen to inhale a carcinogen; of course not breathing involves a lot higher risk, 100%. The most dangerous thing you do every day is get in your car to go to work or school — the highest cause of death ages 1 to 35; but if you lock your doors and stay in the house there are other risks from unemployment to diseases of inaction such as heart disease. So, every day, all day, you make decisions. You measure the risk of any activity and you do a cost-benefit analysis weighing the known risks against the known benefits. The problems that come in with this are that (a) the modern world is to complex; nobody can possibly know all the risks out there; and (b) people tend to both overestimate and underestimate risks depending on their emotions and personal experiences.
As far as too complex, just the PDR list of prescription drugs alone is several thousand pages, and even a good doctor doesn’t know all of it; responsible doctors look things up which is why the PDR exists. And then there are non-prescription drugs, industrial chemicals, pollutants, microwaves, machinery, …
Overestimating and underestimating: for example, people are familiar with cars and use them all the time, and they vastly underestimate the dangers. In fact 45000 people die every year in auto crashes in the US — the equivalent of a jetliner crashing every two days, or of fifteen world trade centers annually. If that many people died in plane crashes or building collapses there would be massive panic. But when they die in cars, it isn’t news, so it just goes on. It took decades of fighting just to get seat belts into cars, more decades to get laws requiring their use, and it’s still a fight to get people to wear them — even though it’s been checked over and over that you’re half as likely to be killed if you’re wearing your seat belt. (Now sit back and wait for the “I know a guy who” anecdote, which proves nothing). And then just talk about the dangers of smoking …

In a democratic society people who see a danger band together and work with elected representatives to try to control the risks that one person acting alone cannot deal with. Also the elected government sets up agencies such as the FDA and NHTSB to try to control risks for everyone in the population. The system is large, bureaucratic, slow, clumsy, and at times intensely annoying. Remember Winston Churchill’s dictum about democracy and all other forms of government. Ask yourself if people had/have a better time of it, more freedom of choice and better health and safety under a tyranny such as Saddam Hussein’s, anarchy as in the Sudan, a religious hierarchy as in Iran, …

Back to who should ban or allow various things, well, that is why you go and vote for your government and go to town meetings and join community organizations and join or form groups trying to better society in a democratic manner — don’t you?