A federal safety agency on Wednesday banned a range of infant sleep products that currently slip between gaps in regulations, an attempt to fix a loophole blamed for at least 90 accidental deaths.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted 3 to 1 to pass the new rule. It requires any product designed for sleeping babies to meet within one year the mandatory federal standards already in place for cribs, bassinets, bedside sleepers and play yards. Dozens of products currently for sale don’t fit into one of those categories, so they don’t need to measure up. Yet they are popular with parents.