Amidst another wave of crib recalls, Health Canada is reminding parents of the potential hazards of drop-side cribs.

Five million cribs have been recalled since 2007. There have been seven suffocation deaths in the United States, and three non-fatal entrapments in Canada because of drop-side cribs.

The most recent recall Feb. 24 was for 1,200 Generation 2 (no longer in business) and ChildESIGNS drop-side cribs, distributed by Montreal-based Juvenile Products Inc., that were sold in Canada at the Bay, Sears Canada and other large retailers from 2001 to 2004.

This comes after the January drop-side crib recall from Quebec-based Dorell Distribution Canada, and the largest crib recall in Canadian history totalling 968,841 from the British Columbia-based company Stork Craft in November.

This is something that is all too familiar to Cochrane’s Jill Lavis.

She was shocked last November to find out her baby’s Stork Craft crib had been recalled. Her little girl had been sleeping in it since April.

The problem was plastic hardware on the cribs wore out over time, allowing the drop-side to detach creating a space between the mattress where infants can get stuck, even leading to suffocation.

She was even more shocked to find out the crib had already been recalled in January 2009 because plastic brackets holding up the drop-side wore out and released the side of the crib.

“After watching the stories on the news I said there is no way she is going back in that crib,” said Lavis.

While Stork Craft did not refund the cribs, the company sent out plastic repair kits, which Lavis thinks is “a joke.”

“It looks like cheap plastic . . . do you want to trust your kid’s life to that?” Lavis asked. “The problem in the first place was cheap plastic breaking.”

In January, Stork Craft announced concern there could be thousands of faulty cribs still in use, despite the two recalls, because so few parents had ordered the repair kits.

Lavis has now joined a group filing a class action suit, being put together by Merchant Law Group LLP, to at least get back the cost of the bed.

“It’s $250 of firewood,” said Lavis, who kept the crib for the class action suit. “And I spent $500 on a new one. I bought the most solid hunk of crib I could find.”

But what Lavis finds really ridiculous is cribs are not the only baby products being recalled — not only has her crib been recalled twice, but her play pen once, and she even thought her car seat was, but it turned out it was a different model.

“I’m just waiting for the next thing to be recalled,” she said. “It makes you wonder about the safety of anything.”

Over the past few years lead-tainted toys, suffocating bassinets and faulty changing tables have made news for the wrong reasons.

Lavis said quality should be of the utmost importance when it comes to products for kids. She feels there is a need for stricter regulations and better testing from Health Canada.

Health Canada is currently looking to revamp the Cribs and Cradles Regulations, which hasn’t seen any changes since it’s inception in 1974.

The section of Health Canada responsible for the enforcement of the Hazardous Products Act (HPA) is the Consumer Product Safety Directorate. But officials have to follow the current legislation — which approved the dropside cribs — and if there is a problem there are no mandatory recalls in Canada. Even making the problems public is voluntary.

“The product safety guys say they test things, but why so many recalls,” Lavis asked.

“I was on a group conference call with Health Canada and they said they can only simulate so much in a lab.” .

Health Canada said the best thing for concerned parents is to visit cpsr-rspc.hc-sc.gc.ca/PR-RP/home-accueil-eng.jsp to verify if their model of crib has been recalled and what further action is recommended.

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