Safety Standard for Bassinets and Cradles

<RULE> CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION <CFR>16 CFR Part 1218</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. CPSC-2010-0028]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Safety Standard for Bassinets and Cradles</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Consumer Product Safety Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In 2013, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published a consumer product safety standard for bassinets and cradles under section 104 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). The standard incorporated by reference ASTM F2194-13, <E T="03">Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Bassinets and Cradles,</E> with modifications to make the standard more stringent. The CPSIA sets forth a process for updating mandatory standards for durable infant or toddler products that are based on a voluntary standard, when a voluntary standards organization revises the standard. Consistent with the CPSIA update process, this direct final rule updates the mandatory standard for bassinets and cradles to incorporate by reference ASTM's 2025 version of the voluntary standard. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The rule is effective on February 21, 2026, unless the Commission receives a significant adverse comment by January 12, 2026. If the Commission receives such a comment, it will publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , withdrawing this direct final rule before its effective date. The incorporation by reference of certain material listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of February 21, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You can submit comments, identified by Docket No. CPSC-2010-0028, by any of the following methods: <E T="03">Electronic Submissions:</E> Submit electronic comments to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. CPSC typically does not accept comments submitted by electronic mail (email), except as described below. CPSC encourages you to submit electronic comments by using the Federal eRulemaking Portal. <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier/Confidential Written Submissions:</E> Submit comments by mail, hand delivery, or courier to: Office of the Secretary, Consumer Product Safety Commission, 4330 East West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814; telephone: (301) 504-7479. If you wish to submit confidential business information, trade secret information, or other sensitive or protected information that you do not want to be available to the public, you may submit such comments by mail, hand delivery, or courier, or you may email them to: <E T="03">cpsc-os@cpsc.gov.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and docket number. CPSC may post all comments without change, including any personal identifiers, contact information, or other personal information provided, to: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Do not submit through this website: confidential business information, trade secret information, or other sensitive or protected information that you do not want to be available to the public. If you wish to submit such information, please submit it according to the instructions for mail/hand delivery/courier/confidential written submissions. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> and insert the docket number, CPSC-2010-0028, into the “Search” box, and follow the prompts. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Keysha Walker, Compliance Officer, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 4330 East West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814; telephone: 301-504-6820; email: <E T="03">kwalker@cpsc.gov</E> or Celestine Kish, Project Manager for Bassinet and Cradle Regulation, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 5 Research Place, Rockville, MD 20850; telephone: 301-987-2547; email: <E T="03">ckish@cpsc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Statutory Authority</HD> Section 104(b)(1) of the CPSIA requires the Commission to assess the effectiveness of voluntary standards for durable infant or toddler products and adopt mandatory standards for these products. 15 U.S.C. 2056a(b)(1). The mandatory standard must be “substantially the same as” the voluntary standard, or it may be “more stringent than” the voluntary standard, if the Commission determines that more stringent requirements would further reduce the risk of injury associated with the product. <E T="03">Id.</E> Section 104(b)(4)(B) of the CPSIA specifies the process for updating the Commission's rules when a voluntary standards organization revises a standard that the Commission incorporated by reference under section 104(b)(1). First, the voluntary standards organization must notify the Commission of the revision. Once the Commission receives this notification, the Commission may reject or accept the revised standard. The Commission may reject the revised standard by notifying the voluntary standards organization, within 90 days of receiving notice of the revision, that it has determined that the revised standard does not improve the safety of the consumer product and that it is retaining the existing standard. If the Commission does not take this action to reject the revised standard, the revised voluntary standard will be considered a consumer product safety standard issued under section 9 of the Consumer Product Safety Act (15 U.S.C. 2058), effective 180 days after the Commission received notification of the revision or on a later date specified by the Commission in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . 15 U.S.C. 2056a(b)(4)(B). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Safety Standard for Bassinets and Cradles</HD> Under section 104(b)(1) of the CPSIA, the Commission adopted a mandatory rule for bassinets and cradles, codified in 16 CFR part 1218, “Safety Standard for Bassinets and Cradles.” The rule incorporated by reference ASTM F2194-13, <E T="03">Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Bassinets and Cradles,</E> with modifications to make the standard more stringent. 78 FR 63019 (Oct. 23, 2013). At the time the Commission published the final rule, ASTM F2194-13 was the current version of the voluntary standard. Since CPSC promulgated a final rule for bassinets and cradles in October 2013, which incorporated by reference ASTM F2194-13 with modifications, ASTM published five revisions to ASTM F2194. However, CPSC was not notified until the fifth revision, ASTM F2194-22 <E T="7333">ε</E> <SU>1</SU> . The staff briefing package in response to the ASTM F2194-22 <E T="7333">ε</E> <SU>1</SU> notification provides a detailed discussion of all the changes to the ASTM standard from the mandatory standard for bassinets and cradles, part 1218. <E T="03">https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/ASTMs-Notice-of-a-Revised-Voluntary-Standard-for-Bassinets-and-Cradles.pdf?VersionId=x73F5OmeW4AJujWJEq8.kBZ28aTFLb2x.</E> </FTNT> Pursuant to the procedure outlined for revised voluntary standards in section 104(b)(4) of the CPSIA, 15 U.S.C. 2056a(b)(4), on September 23, 2022, the Commission determined that ASTM F2194-22 <E T="7333">ε</E> <SU>1</SU> did not improve the safety of the consumer products covered by that standard. Therefore, ASTM F2194-13 (with modifications described in 16 CFR 1218) remains the mandatory standard. After the Commission's rejection of ASTM F2194-22 <E T="7333">ε</E> <SU>1</SU> , staff continued to work with the ASTM F15.18 Bassinets and Cradles Subcommittee and the ASTM F15.18 Bassinet Elevated Surface and Data Task Group (Task Group) to revise the performance requirements for bassinets/cradles to set acceptable baseline safe sleep requirements for products covered by the standard. On August 1, 2025, ASTM approved and on August 12, 2025, published a new version (ASTM F2194-25) of the safety standard for bassinets and cradles. The revised voluntary standard includes performance requirements and test methods, as well as requirements for warning labels and instructions, to address hazards to infants. On August 25, 2025, ASTM notified CPSC of the newest revision to ASTM F2194. On September 10, 2025, the Commission provided notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> of the availability of the revised standard and sought comment on the effect of the revisions on the safety standard for bassinets and cradles. 90 FR 43581. CPSC received four comments. Although the notice of availability requested comments solely on the revised voluntary 2025 standard (ASTM F2194-25), three of the four comments instead are fully or partially related to a previous notice of proposed rulemaking for bassinets and cradles that CPSC published in April 2024. 89 FR 27246. The comment period for that rulemaking closed on June 17, 2024, and comments relating to that rulemaking are out of scope of this direct final rule. Therefore, those comments will not be addressed here. One comment expressed support for accepting ASTM F2194-25 as the mandatory standard referenced in 16 part CFR 1218. One comment pointed out an inaccuracy in the electrical requirements of the standard. Staff appreciates this comment and assesses that this issue can be corrected through the ASTM process in a future revision to the standard and it is not a reduction in safety that would prevent the revised standard from becoming mandatory. One commenter asserted that a side-by-side comparison of the regulation and the new ASTM standard was not provided, making it difficult to evaluate the changes. Staff assesses that such a comparison was not required and notes that ASTM made available a read-only copy of the exis ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━