Parents become outraged when it happens to their child and the medical community says that there was nothing that they could have done to help or to prevent it from happening and this is the case with the occurrence we have come to call SIDS -- Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.



The term itself is a misnomer: it is not a syndrome. It is the act of dying suddenly and inexplicably. In European countries, it is also called cot death, since it is most commonly associated with babies that die in their cribs.

The health care system of the United States has said that there is no true explanation of why crib death occurs, but a man in New Zealand may have come up with an answer over a decade ago.

A man in New Zealand has begun a crusade against crib death and has pointed to a very likely explanation for it.

Most flame retardant mattresses contain one of three chemicals: antimony, arsenic, or phosphorus. These chemicals are poisonous to us as human beings and you have to wonder why they are being put in our mattresses in the first place, much less in the mattress of an infant.

We all know that babies will get their mattresses and bedding wet from spilling milk, juice, urinating through their diapers, and etcetera, but what happens when these spills do not get cleaned up properly?

Mold can grow in mattresses just as easily as carpet or on wet clothing, but the difference is that when mold begins to grow in a mattress made with these poisonous chemicals, they (like anything else on the planet that digests things) secrete gases.

Since mold is consuming poisonous chemicals, is it not safe to say that these gases are also poisonous? An infant sleeping on its stomach and breathing in these gases would probably die, right?

It is a fact that less babies have died since the advice was given to sleep a child on his or her back instead of on their stomach.

His advice says to not re-use an old baby mattress, but to buy a new one when you have another child because the instances of crib death have shown to increase with the more children you have. It is more common in children that are the 2nd, 3rd, and so on in their family.

Special mattress wraps can also be purchased out of New Zealand for less than $50. The question of $50. Bucks or possible crib death. The choice is yours.