MT. LAUREL, NJ -- The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA) and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan are at it again over crib safety issues.

Madigan, who earlier last year took the JPMA to task for not taking a firmer stand on banning drop cribs, issued a press release on December 22 urging parents and caregivers to immediately stop using crib bumper pads. “We know that children have tragically died in their cribs because of these bumper pads,” Madigan said. “Parents and caregivers should remove these bumpers to prevent tragedy.”

According to Madigan's office's press release , since 2008, the National Center for Child Death Review has received reports of 14 infants who have died from suffocation caused by crib bumpers.

The JPMA responded with a statement of its own that very same day. “JPMA is disappointed to learn about Attorney General Madigan’s position on crib bumper pad use from the Chicago Tribune,” said Michael Dwyer, CAE executive director of the JPMA. “We contacted Madigan’s office in October to discuss a partnership on JPMA’s Safe Sleep Campaign, and to date, have not received a response.”

In its release, the JPMA added that it "has consistently noted the following recommendations for crib bumper pad use, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

“The key issue is to distinguish between ‘pillow-like’ bumpers and traditional infant bumpers which were determined not to present a substantial hazard by the CPSC. Unless there’s a clear distinction between ‘soft’ bedding and ‘pillow-like’ bumpers, traditional bumper pad products can be erroneously characterized as a suffocation risk,” Dwyer said.

The JPMA said it has commissioned a study of bumper pads and is currently reviewing outcomes and data from the study, while considering submission of the final results for peer review and publishing in a medical journal. 

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan

as it prepared to launch its national “Safe Sleep” campaign in Chicago, the first stop in a five-city tour. She likened the JPMA's promotion to “peddling deadly merchandise in our own backyard where we fight daily to protect our children from such harmful products.” This followed her criticism several months earlier that the JPMA continued to certify drop-side cribs as safe even in the face of recalls totaling nearly 9 million cribs.

Read Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's press release on crib bumper safety.

Read the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association's statement rebutting the Illinois Attorney General office's press release.