Safety Standard for High Chairs

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If you're pregnant and planning to buy a high chair, you might want to wait until next year. 

That's because starting in June 2019, all new high chairs in American homes and restaurants will adhere to a new, stricter set of safety standards.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission updated its mandatory requirements for high chairs manufactured in and imported to America.

The move is designed to reduce the number of childhood injuries associated with high chairs, the majority of which occur when kids attempt to climb into or out of the chair; when chairs tip over or after a restraint or lock failed, according to the commission.

But, before you start fantasizing about finding shiny high chairs wherever you take your little ones, know this won't be an overnight change in places like restaurants. These standards apply to NEW high chairs, not retroactively to ones sold before June 2019. 

The new federal high chair standards:

• Have higher standards of rearward stability, making it harder for chairs to fall over if a child pushes against something while in the chair or the chair is otherwise moved

• Require warning labels to be placed where they can be seen while the high chair is in use. They caution against potential risks such as skull fractures and severe head injuries resulting from children falling out of the chairs.

• Call for new chairs to be built with a permanent passive crotch restraint (two separate bounded openings for the occupant's legs). The commission stated this requirement is intended to reduce the likelihood of death from positional asphyxia, or suffocation due to the positioning of a child’s body.

Chairs must also have a three-point restraint system and come with instructional literature that support the new warning labels.

The standards were unanimously approved. They’ll become effective on June 19, 2019.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found 271 injuries and two fatalities related to high chairs between January 2011 and September 2017. Most involved children between 7 and 18 months old. Skull fractures, broken bones and lacerations were among the high chair-related injuries included in the report.

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