How about some alarming studies and news reports to fill your sunny parenting weekend with freakout and doom?
- Fat and lazy, true, but not dumb: child obesity researchers in East London found out some of their lazier test subjects were putting their pedometers on their dogs. [bbc via the awl]
- An EPA/UNC-CH study found that playing in beach sand gives kids diarrhea. Because they eat it, and it has fecal matter in it. Nice. [newsday; abstract]
- "Friction in the saddle" may sound like fun, but for your normal sperm, it can be deadly! Spanish researchers found that triathletes who cycled more than 300km/wk showed up to a 75% decrease in normal sperm count. [bbc via dt sr freakout correspondent sara]
- Another month, another 400,000 Simplicity cribs recalled for deadly design flaws: This time it's dropside cribs which have been involved in at least 25 injuries and incidents and one death. The cribs were sold in major retailers between January 2005 and June 2009. June 2009? W.T.F.?? What retailers are still stocking and selling cribs from a derelict, defunct, accountability-dodging corporate disaster like Simplicity? [cpsc.gov]
- Kolcraft, on the other hand, is surely an upstanding corporate citizen--who just happens to have to recall seemingly every portable crib/playard they've sold the last ten years. After at least 347 incidents of crib sides failing and children falling out and getting hurt, Kolcraft has recalled 21 different models of playards, around 1 million units, sold between 2000 and last week. Hey, look! There's the Jeep Sahara crib we use! Glad the CPSC got right on that. [cpsc]
