THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 10, 1994 TAG: 9412090109
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY L. ROSS, THE WASHINGTON POST
LENGTH: Short : 33 lines
A RECALL of 2.5 million beanbag chairs has been issued by the Baseline Design Division of Crain Industries Inc. of Fort Smith, Ark., in cooperation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The $20 item was sold nationwide from 1990 through 1994 at stores such as Wal-Mart and K mart and the Lillian Vernon catalog.
The chair is filled with foam pellets and closed with a zipper. A 19-month-old boy in Unionville, Mo., suffocated Sept. 11 after unzipping the bag, crawling in and inhaling the pellets. In another case, a 2 1/2-year-old girl in El Paso survived after ingesting foam when her older brother zipped her inside the chair.
Anyone identifying a Crain Baseline beanbag chair from the attached label should contact the company at 1 (800) 649-8558 and arrange to have it sent back. Crain spokesman Joe Gay said, ``We will remove the zipper handle and glue the zipper tracks so they stay together,'' a CPSC-approved remedy.
Gay noted that other manufacturers also make zippered beanbag chairs. CPSC spokeswoman Kathleen Begala said the fatality should ``raise a red flag'' for beanbag-chair owners with small children.
KEYWORDS: RECALL by CNB