Child’s Skull Fracture Leads to Baby Carrier Recall
Baby product recalls are the worst. They happen so randomly and they always make a person feel like the world is just an unpredictable death trap and every expensive, top-safety-rated product you spend months researching is going to wind up being made of glass chips and lead paint. Most recently, a high-end baby carrier recall has been put into place after a child reportedly fell out of the leg hole of the baby carrier and suffered a skull fracture. Now the maker of the baby carriers is recalling 82,000 of them.
The baby carrier recall affects the Osprey Poco baby carrier, which is a popular, steel-framed, backpack-style baby carrier for outdoorsy types.
It’s sold at REI, outdoor-activity stores, and a lot of other stores, like Target and Amazon, and it’s designed for hiking and long, outdoors activities. They have a built-in backpack and sell for between $200 and $300, depending on the store.
The Poco baby carriers have been very popular, but recently a small child slipped through the leg opening in the carrier and suffered a skull fracture. According to CBS News Cleveland 19, that child was not the first one to fall through the Poco’s leg hole like that, either. The company says it knows of three other children who have fallen through the leg opening of a Poco baby carrier. The company did not say if any of those children were seriously injured, but it did say that one of the children suffered “scratches” to the head.
The US Consumer Products Safety Commission says people should stop using the baby carriers immediately, until they can be fixed. Fortunately, it seems like making the Osprey Poco baby carrier safer for kids is pretty easy. Osprey’s website indicates that the Poco safety problem can be fixed by using a little Y-shaped seat pad, which makes it so that a child fits better in the seat and can’t slip through the leg opening.
“At Osprey, safety is our number one priority. As soon as we learned about the issues with the product, we immediately worked in full cooperation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to address the problem,” the company said in a statement. “Per the recommendation of the CPSC, we are offering owners a free Seat Pad Insert for all recalled Poco Child Carriers manufactured for sale from January 2012 through December 2014.”
Anybody who has a Poco baby carrier affected by the recall can request one of the free seat pads, which the company will mail to you so you can go back to hiking, skiing, backpacking, camping and doing whatever other outdoorsy things a person does with a toddler strapped to one’s back.
