If you have young children at home, you probably have safety locks on cabinets and drawers and gates blocking off the stairs.
But, is your furniture anchored to the wall? If it’s not, it should be.
That’s the warning Kimberly Amato of Sterling, Massachusetts, has been giving for almost 20 years. She wants to ensure that no other child dies the way her daughter did.
“On the morning of December 18, in 2004, I woke to every parent's nightmare,” said Amato. “We found our 3-year-old twin daughter, Meghan, lifeless underneath her dresser in her bedroom. Her dresser had somehow fallen on her in the night. We didn't hear it fall, and she was unable to cry because her airway was compressed.”
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She still has the dresser. It is heavy, but it isn’t a large piece of furniture.
“We think what happened is she opened the bottom drawer and maybe opened this drawer as well and either stood on the edge or in the drawer and was reaching for something,” explained Amato. “And that's probably what caused it to tip.”
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 581 people were killed in furniture, TV and appliance tip-overs from 2000 through 2022. Thousands of others were injured.
Recent statistics show tip-overs still send about 17 people a day to emergency rooms. Most are children under the age of 6, but older adults are at risk too.
The CPSC’s Anchor It! Campaign warns of the dangers. PSAs show simulated situations and real footage of tip-overs caught on video, illustrating how quickly these tragedies can occur. You can see them here.
The CPSC urges all adults to take essential steps to protect their families from dangerous tip-over risks:
- Anchor TVs and furniture, such as bookcases and dressers, securely to the wall.
- Always place TVs on a sturdy, low base, and push the TV back as far as possible, particularly if anchoring is not possible.
- Avoid displaying or storing items, such as toys and remotes, where kids may be tempted to climb to reach for them.
- Store heavier items on lower shelves, or in lower drawers.
- If purchasing a new TV, consider recycling older ones not currently in use. If moving the older TV to another room, be sure it is anchored to the wall properly.
- Keep TV and cable cords out of reach of children.
- Even when TVs and furniture are anchored, adult supervision is still recommended.
“I hear all the time from parents, well, it's not going to happen to me because I always watch my children,” said Amato. “You can be the most perfect parent, but you don't always watch your kids. Meghan was asleep, it was the night, she was supposed to be alone in her room, asleep. We were all asleep.”
Amato is the board vice chair of a group called Parents Against Tip-Overs, a nonprofit created by bereaved parents to advocate for stronger safety standards. She said the advent of social media was instrumental in raising awareness of the problem and the group fought for the Sturdy Act, which was signed into law in 2022 and took effect last fall.
“The Sturdy Act requires that dressers and other clothing, storage furniture, which is defined in the scope of the law, has to meet minimum stability testing standards,” she explained. “And those minimum stability testing standards are far more stringent than any other tests have ever been for this type of furniture. It has to test the real-world reasons that furniture tips.”
It was a huge victory that was a long time coming. “I cried some very bittersweet tears,” she said.
The law only impacts furniture manufactured after September 1, 2023. And mandates that clothing storage furniture must include a warning about the dangers of tip-overs and an anchoring kit to secure it to the wall.
Anchoring kits cost $10 to $20 and take minutes to install. They should be attached to all the furniture in your home, and any home where your child spends time.
“There's a lot of myths and misconceptions out there, that it's only heavy furniture or it's only light furniture or it's only tall furniture,” said Amato. “The reality is it doesn't matter…if it's not secured to the wall the potential is there that it could fall and injure or kill a small child or even an elder.”
Take the time to anchor your furniture and make sure the parents in your life know to do it as well.
“You can fix holes in your furniture, you can fix holes in your wall,” said Amato. “You don’t want to carry the huge hold in your heart that we all have, and we have to live with every day because we didn’t know that securing your furniture to the wall was something that we could have and should have done, whereas now, you do. “
This month the CPSC and Alliance4Safety recalled millions of furniture anchor kits that used plastic zip-tie style anchors, which can become brittle and break. If you have them in your house, you need to replace them. You can find the details of the recall here.
Get more information on Parents Against Tip-Overs here. Information on the CPSC’s Anchor It! campaign is available here.
If you’ve been injured from a product safety hazard, you can report it to the CPSC here.
