 Welcome to the public meeting of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Today, we're considering staff posed final rule to establish a safety standard for crib mattresses. It's an important rule that will establish mandatory safety standards for crib mattresses address hazards from a traffic, laceration, and suffocation. More than a decade ago, Congress called on the CPSC to protect babies by establishing standards for durable infant products. This is an essential step towards that mandate. Staff have identified nearly 500 instances associated with crib mattresses since 2010, with at least 139 deaths. This rule will ensure that all mattresses used by infants meet essential safety standards. Recently, we've heard from stakeholders about one aspect of this rule, the incorporation of existing voluntary standards for the aftermarket play yard mattresses. We approve this final rule today will be requiring industry to meet the standard, except for itself, the voluntary standard. I'm aware that an ASTM subcommittee is examining this voluntary standard and considering changes to it. While I understand that CPSC staff and other stakeholders have concerns about the current proposal, the process is going forward as it should. If this rule comes final today, it will not mark the end of CPSC's participation, that effort at ASTM, nor will it set a current voluntary standard in immutable stone. Our process is clear. If the ASTM subcommittee makes changes to its standard that improve safety, the commission will be able to incorporate them into the rule through the statutory update process. I welcome any changes and updates that advance consumer product safety. We should start by providing a baseline protection for infants and children. We have several staff members present at this meeting. With us are two members of our staff who briefed us on the proposal in November, Hope Nestero, Program Manager for Children's Products and Mary House, Attorney of the Regulatory Affairs Division of the Office of General Counsel. And also in attendance are Mary Boyle, Executive Director, Dwayne Rae, Deputy Executive Director for Operations, Dwayne Boniface, Director of the Office of Hazard Advocation and Reduction, Austin Schlick, General Counsel, and Alberta Mills, the Commission's Secretary. Each commissioner will have five minutes for questions. After questions are complete, consider any amendments. Once again, I remind everyone that's perfectly permissible to voice your personal opinions on illegal issues. It's not appropriate to discuss any advice given to us by the Office of General Counsel outside of executive session. Illegal advice to receive must remain confidential. And finally, I've asked all panelists, commissioners and staff, to meet your computer if you aren't speaking. We experienced feedback in the last meeting, and just to make sure everyone is watching can hear the proceedings. With that, turn for questions for staff. I don't have any. Commissioner Biacco, do you have questions? I do not. Thank you. Commissioner Feldman. I do not have any questions, Mr. Chairman. I did for the record, I want to say I received a letter last night from Alan Schoem, who is representing Dream on Me, an industry stakeholder in this space, with unanimous consent. I'd like to enter that letter into the record, but I have no questions at this time. Without objection. Commissioner Trumka. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no questions. Thank you. With that, we turn to take any amendments to the proposed formal role. I don't have any amendments. Commissioner Biacco. I do not. Thank you. Commissioner Feldman. I do not have any amendments. Mr. Trumka. I have no amendments. All right. Seeing that there are no amendments, I'm just going to move to the, I move to approve the staff's final draft, final rule for career of mattress safety and to direct publication of the same in the federal register. Is there a second? Back in. Thank you. I'll go into the vote. Commissioner Biacco, how do you vote? I vote yes. Commissioner Feldman. I vote yes. Commissioner Trumka. I vote yes. The yeses are four. The nos are zeros. The motions are approved, the draft final rule for career mattress passes. The final draft rule has been approved and shall be published. Oh, I'm sorry. I realize that I didn't vote. So I should say I voted yes too, which is why I chatted myself ahead of myself. So I vote yes. Four yeses, zero nos. The motion to, which honestly, you could have approved it without me, but I do want to vote on this as well. The motion to prove the staff's final, draft final rule for career mattresses passes. The draft final rule has been approved and shall be published in the final register. Now I just want to give everybody 10 minutes for commissioner for any closing remarks. I'll just take a couple of minutes and just say thank you to everybody, commissioners and staff. I'm really pleased that we completed this rule today. Crib mattresses are a long-lasting product that families use and reuse for many years on end. And a rule governing their safety is long overdue with this vote for ensuring the standards governing the safety of these durable infant products will keep up with the times. Babies shouldn't face hazards in their cribs. That place should be the safest for them and play our germane safe, whether a parent uses the mattresses sold or the ones that buy in the aftermarket. And today's rule is an essential step forward. And I look forward to working with everybody going forward to keep this as strong as possible. I do want to thank Joyce Davis, the president for keeping babies safe. Joyce's petition was impetus for this rule and her dedicated advocacy on behalf of her son, Garrett, is inspirational. And all this, again, I want to thank all the staff for their work and for the commissioners for working together. With that, Commissioner Biacco, do you have a statement? Yes, thank you. This one was a close call for me. I'm not thrilled with some of the data that was relied upon. I also remain extremely concerned with this rule as I have with some of the other infant rules that we have passed particularly recently, that we are and we know that parents do make adjustments even though they know what the best sleep patterns should be. They know bear is best. They know the ABCs of sleep. They do take steps in their mind to make babies more comfortable by adding blankets and pillows. And those things in a play yard or in a crib, as we all know, increase the risk of harm. And so I do hesitate and worry that some of the rules that we pass, including this one, do push parents into making decisions about their children that are not necessarily in their best interest. I'm also a little bit concerned that we have, it's my understanding anyway, that we do have another voluntary standard at issue either, and I'm not clear on the votes, but either today that ballot was being taken or it's going to close within a few weeks. And I voiced concern that maybe we should wait on that, but having thought about it, I hope that the voluntary standards organizations start picking up the pace. A lot of the things that this particular commission has addressed recently have been around for way too long. And I think the voluntary standards organizations, they do a lot of great work, but I would encourage them to get these updates and get these voluntary standards in place sooner rather than later. That being said, I do support the rule and I am concerned that for baby safety. So that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I do agree. If there is best to get that message out there, we do figure out how to do that best. And thank you. Mr. Feldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna take a moment just to thank staff and my fellow commissioners for everybody's hard work on the rule today. I think this is an example of the 104 process, working as it should, what a standard that is strong and addresses the safety issues with a durable nursery and infant product. I wanna echo Mr. Chairman, the statements that you made at the top of the meeting today with respect to the ASTM process, what we're doing here, contemplates additional work within the ASTM subcommittee and there is a process that's spelled out in statute within section 104 to make adjustments as necessary and within the scope of that law. And I think we will continue to engage, that's my hope and expectation and make adjustments as necessary and when appropriate, hopefully sooner rather than later. But I think what we've done today here is good and puts a 104 rule in place that's going to improve safety. We're all better for that. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Feldman. I agree. Mr. Tromka. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, thank you to staff and the other commissioners, everyone who worked on getting this rule in place. I've got two young kids and I can't count how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night and felt this, I felt compelled to just go check on them to make sure they're okay. Parents worry about whether their kids are safe, particularly when they sleep. And even parents who know all the rules of safe sleep and we know to put babies on their backs on a firm flat surface with nothing else in the space, but even then we worry and we don't always know why. We also make some assumptions about the things that we shouldn't have to worry about, just viable assumptions. A lot of parents assume that the governments check the safety of anything sold as an infant product, particularly an infant sleep product. But for too many things, that's not true. And until today, it wasn't even true for the one thing we tell parents that it's safe to have in a baby's sleep environment, mattress. But with today's passage of the final rule, we've come one step closer to meeting parents justifiable expectations that we're ensuring the safety of the products in their baby's room. And I'm very glad we did the right thing. I also just wanna mention how much I agree with Commissioner Biakko's sentiment that we're not gonna wait and have our pace dictated by anybody else. We need to move quickly and I hope others keep up. With that, Ms. Chairman, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. And I would say once again, thanks to staff and all my fellow commissioners for their work on this rule. And with that, this concludes today's decisional meeting of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.