"A CHILD'S CRIB is supposed to be the safest place in the world for them. And that day, it wasn't," says Marie Reen of Boston. For Reen, that day was last May, when she put her 13-month-old son Jimmy into his crib for a nap. Later, she and her young daughter, Shannon, went upstairs to wake him. "When I looked in the crib all I could see was his feet and the sheet," Reen says. "He was covered, almost from his ankles to his head in this sheet. He was just limp and lifeless. Shannon [was] just screaming, 'Jimmy Blue! Jimmy Blue!' And I laid him on the ground there was no pulse and he wasn't breathing." Reen called 911 and her family. Her husband Jim happened to reach his mother on his car phone. He says his wife told him, "his coloring's back, he's all right, they took him to the hospital." As they all gathered in the waiting room, everyone assumed Jimmy would pull through. But then their doctor came out to talk to them. "When he said that there was nothing more that they could do, I just I just collapsed," Reen says. "I just never thought that that's what they were going to say." The cause of death - asphyxiation. Little Jimmy had somehow managed to pull his sheet up and then wrapped himself in it so tightly it cut off his air supply. Lea Thompson: "When you put the sheets on the bed, do you remember if they fit?" Marie Reen: "The sheets fit to the point they probably touched the bottom corners, they did not go under the corners." Thompson: "And did you even think twice about it?" Reen: "No. Because pretty much the other sheets I had did the same thing." Marie Reen also found out something else that disturbed her: just about everything in a crib must meet federal safety standards, including the crib itself. Everything, that is, but the sheets. Who would ever imagine that a crib sheet could be a potential safety hazard? Marie Reen had to find out if Jimmy was the only one this had ever happened to. A friend of hers called sheet manufacturers. They said it was a freak accident and that they stood by their products. However, Reen learned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission knew of two other deaths since 1984 in which children had suffocated in their crib sheets. She also found out something else that disturbed her: just about everything in a crib must meet federal safety standards, including the crib itself. Everything, that is, but the sheets. So Reen started writing letters to consumer groups and magazines like "Good Housekeeping." Millions of sheets are used daily without incident. But Don Mays, technical director of the Good Housekeeping Institute (part of "Good Housekeeping" magazine) thinks if a standard could prevent even one death it's worth examining. "When we got Reen's letter we were very saddened by it," he says. "We were discussing it among ourselves here at Good Housekeeping and decided that what we needed was a more thorough look." So, the institute decided to evaluate the safety of fitted crib sheets at its labs in New York. The institute's technicians first tested the sheets for shrinkage. Good Housekeeping staffers bought 22 name-brand crib sheets and subjected them to an industry-accepted test: they washed the sheets, and dried them five different times, just as any consumer would. The institute was very surprised how much the sheets varied in size after washing and that most couldn't fit the mattress easily. In fact, of the 22 sheets - only four ended up holding their fit properly after repeated washings. Lea Thompson: "This is the same manufacturer that was involved in Jimmy's case?" Don Mays: "That's right, if you look and see how this fits it's very difficult to wrap this around the mattress, in fact it doesn't wrap at all." Thompson: "And this is the problem?" Mays: "The problem is that when a crib sheet fits this way it's too easy to lift it up and dislodge it from the mattress." The staff at Good Housekeeping Institute also wanted to know something else: once a sheet had shrunk, how easily could it be pulled off its corners? Pulling a sheet off, of course, is how a baby could become entangled. So for the second part of its crib sheet experiment, Good Housekeeping used a 20-pound sandbag to simulate the weight of an average 1-year-old child. The institute's researchers knew from checking with doctors that a 1-year-old can pull with at least three pounds of force. So its technicians used a piece of equipment known as a force gauge to find out how easily the sheets came off. The scorecard for the 22 sheets tested? In Good Housekeeping's experiment, four crib sheets scored highest because they held their fit and could not be pulled off easily. They were: Lands End's $16 cotton sheet from its Coming Home collection; the Company Store's $22 cotton sheet, and Eddie Bauer's cotton flannel sheet at $19 and cotton sheet at $21. But three crib sheets - a Simmons cotton knit at $14.99; a Gerber cotton at $11.99 and a Carter's cotton flannel made by Riegel at $9.99 - scored lowest. We asked those manufacturers to comment. They referred us to the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, which told us it was unaware of "any incidents involving fitted crib sheets" until just this year. And the association added, "we view each injury or death as a very serious issue." Riegel, the company that makes about 60 percent of the sheets on the market - including the sheet involved in Jimmy Reen's case - also wrote, "the Good Housekeeping tests were apparently not based on any recognized or universally accepted standard." The company also says it tries to provide safe products, even putting them through rigorous safety tests conducted by nationally known labs. Meanwhile Reen, who has no design experience, has managed to design a sheet of her own. She thinks her design is safer. She's even applied for a patent. Her design has a flap on one end that secures under the mattress with Velcro, totally enclosing the mattress. As you pull the sheet, you pull up the mattress. Lea Thompson: "The idea being there's no way for the sheet to pull loose?" Marie Reen: "Exactly." Reen also wants the government to write standards to make manufacturers design crib sheets that won't pull off. "Dateline" asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission why there isn't a regulation. The agency told us that, "It's not clear from the majority of cases that the deaths would have been prevented by regulation on fitted crib sheets." Good Housekeeping doesn't agree. "We think there should be an industry standard for crib sheets to make sure that they fit properly and that they stay on," says Mays. In fact, Good Housekeeping says it will lobby to try to make sure there is a regulation for fitted crib sheets. Reen says, "the scary thing is I've spoken to so many people who have said 'I've gone in and my child has pulled up the sheet, and I've gone in and found them with it wrapped on their arm or their leg or their body. But you know, I never thought that it was a hazard.'" The Consumer Product Safety Commission suggests parents take these additional precautions to keep their children's cribs safe: Keep soft, fluffy things like quilts and stuffed animals out of cribs because they can suffocate babies. Make sure the crib's mattress is firm and snug. And never put infants to sleep on adult beds, waterbeds or bunk beds. Good Housekeeping Chart of Crib Sheets According to the November 1998 issue of Good Housekeeping, five infants under two years old may have died because their fitted crib sheets came loose. Children's safety advocates say that after repeated washings, many fitted crib sheets are too small for mattresses. Indeed, the Good Housekeeping Institute washed and dried 23 sheets made by 14 manufacturers and found that most did not fit. The table below ranks (from best to worst) the sheets evaluated by the Good Housekeeping Institute. The five sheets that measured up best all covered the mattress's sides, wrapped underneath at the corners by at least two inches, and required at least eight pounds of pull power to lift up a corner. For more information, pick up a copy of the November issue of Good Housekeeping. SHEET RANKING: (Best to Worst)* 1. Coming Home (Lands' End) 100% cotton $16 2. The Company Store 100% cotton $22 3. Eddie Bauer Home 100% cotton flannel $19 4. Eddie Bauer Home 100% cotton $21 5. Dormisett (The Company Store) 100% cotton flannel $19 6. Dundee Mills Inc. (Disney) 50% cotton/poly $6.99 7. KidsLine 100% cotton knit $10.99 8. Home Style for Kids 100% cotton flannel $6.75 9. Dundee Mills Inc. (Disney) 50% cotton/poly $8.99 10. Coming Home (Lands' End) 100% cotton flannel $15 11. Riegel 100% cotton $7.99 12. Riegel 100% cotton flannel $10.99 13. Sumersault, Ltd. 100% cotton $36 14. Fisher-Price Inc. 50% cotton/poly $7.99 15. Riegel (Sesame Street) 100% cotton $7.99 16. Riegel 50% cotton/poly $7.99 17. Sumersault 50% cotton/poly $29.99 18. Kooshies Baby Products 100% cotton flannel $10.99 19. Carters by Riegel 50% cotton/poly $7.99 20. Gerber 100% cotton $11.99 21. Simmons 100% cotton knit $14.99 22. Carters by Riegel 100% cotton flannel $9.99 *A total of 23 sheets was tested. One, however, was not ranked (Vidals Creations; 100% cotton knit; $14.99). Testing could not be completed due to the excessively loose fit of the sheet.
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