A new national consumer safety law, first introduced in 2008, was finally passed on June 27 of this year. It is titled “Danny’s Law” in honor of the 16-month-old child who tragically died after a defective playpen collapsed on him.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., announced the new, stricter safety rules for children’s products. She was joined at the Capitol by Danny’s mother, Linda Ginzel, who, with her husband, Boaz Keysar, campaigned unrelentingly for the new law.

In 1998, little Danny was strangled at a day care center in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood while in a Playskool playpen. Although the product had been recalled in 1993, tragically, the message never reached the child’s day care center.

The playpen, which was exhibited during Rep. Schakowsky’s announcement, showed its top rail collapsed and crushing the neck of an infant dummy, the same method that killed Danny Keysar. The design was known to be dangerous – four children had died before Danny. According to government figures, 1.5 million playpens of the same design were made from 1990 to 1997.

Along with the Ginzel-Keysar campaign for the consumer safety law, the Chicago Tribune published a series of investigative reports into the risks posed by dangerous children’s products. According to the newspaper’s latest report, “The new rules for playpens require independent tests for stability, to make sure children cannot become trapped, and to check that the pen will not collapse on a child who is inside.”