The Cause of Cot Death and How to Prevent it - by Dr Jim Sprott .

Many parents will be unaware of a 100% successful cot death prevention campaign which a New Zealand scientist, Dr Jim Sprott, has been running for several years.

Dr Sprott states with certainty that the cause of cot death has been discovered: It is caused by very toxic nerve gases which can be generated from mattresses and certain other bedding used in babies’ cots.

The solution is to prevent exposure of babies to the gases, by wrapping mattresses in accordance with a specified protocol and ensuring that bedding used on top of a wrapped mattresses does not contain any phosphorus, arsenic or antimony (the chemicals which - when combined with fungal growth - can result in the gas generation concerned).

And the method works. Since late 1994 mattress-wrapping has been publicised nationwide in New Zealand, and during that time an estimated 120,000 babies have slept on wrapped mattresses. Prior to the commencement of mattress-wrapping, New Zealand had the highest cot death rate in the world (2.1 deaths per 1000 live births). Following the adoption of mattress-wrapping the New Zealand cot death rate has fallen by 48% - and there has been no reported cot death among those babies who have slept on correctly wrapped mattresses.

This major reduction in the New Zealand cot death rate cannot be attributed to orthodox cot death prevention advice (e.g. face-up sleeping). There has been no material change in that advice in New Zealand since 1992.

So what does Dr Sprott say about orthodox cot death advice?

Don’t smoke around your baby.

Recent history refutes any suggestion that smoking causes cot death, says Dr Sprott. Smoking was very common in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, but cot death was virtually non-existent.

Smoking is prevalent in present-day Russia and Japan, but the cot death rates are low. No cause-and-effect relationship between smoking and cot death has been established - they are socio-economic parallels. Put another way, smoking is more common among poorer people, and so is cot death. But it does not follow that smoking is therefore a cot death risk factor.

Don’t bedshare with your baby if you also smoke or smoked during pregnancy.

Misleading advice, says Dr Sprott. The risk posed by bedsharing does not arise from smoking - it arises from the mattress. Adults’ mattresses very frequently contain the same chemicals and fungi as babies’ mattresses, and therefore they can generate the same toxic gas/es. (For physiological reasons adults are not put at risk by this gas generation in mattresses.)

Sleep your baby with feet to the foot of the cot.

According to Dr Sprott, this practice affords no protection whatsoever against cot death. Any area on an unwrapped mattress where a baby sleeps is a potential source of toxic gas, since that is the area which becomes warm and moist (promoting the fungal activity which can cause gas generation).

Sleep your baby face up.

Face-up sleeping is a partial preventive against cot death. This is because the gases which cause cot death are more dense than air. They diffuse away towards the floor, and therefore a baby sleeping face up is less likely to inhale them.

So the partial success of face-up sleeping confirms the toxic gas theory. And so does much more research. According to Dr Sprott (who has a PhD in chemistry and is expert in the gas generation concerned), every step in the toxic gas theory for cot death has been proved. A considerable amount of this research has been written up and published in peer-reviewed medical and other scientific journals. In fact, mattress-wrapping for cot death prevention is supported by wider research than supported the introduction of various items of orthodox advice (including face-up sleeping). And contrary to claims by numerous orthodox cot death researchers, the 1998 UK Limerick Report did not disprove the toxic gas theory - as a highly qualified environmental scientist has pointed out in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

Some researchers have stated that cot death may have a number of causes (the so-called ”multifactorial” theory). Not so, says Dr Sprott. At this point he draws attention to a highly significant piece of information about cot death, which is demonstrated by British statistics: the cot death rate rises from the first baby in a family to the second, and from the second baby to the third, and so on. Babies of solo parents have a very high cot death rate. Dr Sprott explains that the rising rate of cot death from one sibling to the next destroys every medical and physiological theory for the cause of cot death.

For example, some researchers think cot death is caused by babies re-breathing their exhaled carbon dioxide. However, all babies exhale a similar amount of CO2, regardless of whether they are first, second or later babies. Therefore, the rising rate of cot death from one sibling to the next refutes the CO2 theory.

Some researchers think cot death is related to the size of babies’ airways. However, for this theory to be valid would require second babies’ airways to be smaller than those of first babies; and third babies’ airways to be smaller than those of second babies; and so on. Clearly, therefore, the airways theory is wrong, because the size of babies’ airways is not related to birth order.

So what is the explanation for the rising rate of cot death from one sibling to the next? Cot death is caused by gases generated in mattresses - and many parents re-use mattresses from one baby to the next. If a mattress contains any of the chemicals concerned and fungi have become established in the mattress during previous use by another baby, generation of toxic gas commences sooner and in greater volume when the mattress is re-used. This accounts for the rising rate of cot death from one sibling to the next. It also accounts for the very high cot death rate among babies of solo parents, who for economic reasons are more likely to sleep their babies on previously used mattresses which they have acquired secondhand.

It all fits from a theoretical point of view, says Dr Sprott - and the seven-year New Zealand experience provides practical proof that mattress-wrapping prevents cot death.

Orthodox cot death researchers say that cot death rates have fallen without the introduction of mattress-wrapping - and they have. But Dr Sprott points out a crucial difference: Many babies have died of cot death where parents followed orthodox cot death prevention advice; but there has been no reported cot death on a correctly wrapped mattress. Unlike orthodox advice, mattress-wrapping has a 100% success record in cot death prevention.

This article was written by Dr Sprott Cotlife 2000 www.cotlife2000.com/

Toxic gases

In 1989, a controversial piece of research by UK Scientist Barry Richardson claimed that all cot death was the result of toxic nerve gases being produced through the action of fungus in mattresses on compounds of phosphorus, arsenic and antimony. These chemicals are frequently used to make mattresses fire-retardant.

A major plank in this explanation is the widely-observed phenomenon that the risk of cot death rises from one sibling to the next. No satisfactory biological explanation for this has ever been put forward. Richardson claims that the cause is that parents are more likely to buy new bedding for their first child, and to re-use that bedding for later children. The more frequently used the bedding is, the more chance there will be that fungus has become resident in the material and thus the higher chance of cot death. A paper by Peter Fleming and Peter Blair [7] references evidence from other studies that both supports and refutes the increasing occurrence of SIDS with mattress sharing and suggests that this is still inconclusive.

In 1994, the New Zealand government, under the advice of Dr. Jim Sprott, issued advice recommending new parents to either buy bedding free of the toxic compounds or to wrap the mattresses in a barrier film to prevent the escape of the gases. Dr. Sprott claims that no case of cot death has ever been traced back to a properly manufactured or wrapped mattress [8].

However, a final report of The Expert Group to Investigate Cot Death Theories: Toxic Gas Hypothesis, published in May 1998 concluded that ”there was no evidence to substantiate the toxic gas hypothesis that antimony- and phosphorus-containing compounds used as fire retardants in PVC and other cot mattress materials are a cause of SIDS. Neither was there any evidence to believe that these chemicals could pose any other health risk to infants.” (See FSID Press release). The report also states that ”in normal cot-like conditions it is not possible to generate toxic gas from antimony in mattresses” and ”babies have also been found to die on wrapped mattresses.” Dr. Sprott’s website, however, claims [9] [10] that the study does not actually refute his theory:

Contrary to media publicity, the 1998 UK Limerick Report did not disprove the toxic gas theory - as a highly qualified environmental scientist has stated in the New Zealand Medical Journal. In fact, the Limerick Committee’s experiments proved the fungal generation of toxic gases (forms of stibine and arsine) from cot mattress materials.

According to Dr. Sprott, as of 2006, the New Zealand government has not reported any SIDS deaths when babies have slept on mattresses wrapped according to his method. While the Limerick report claims that babies have been found to die on wrapped mattresses, Dr. Sprott argues that a chemical analysis of the bedding should be performed. He additionally claims that this part of the report was flawed [11]:

In February 2000 Dr Peter Fleming (a co-author of the Limerick Report and principal author of the UK CESDI Report) conceded that the claim that three babies in the United Kingdom had died of cot death on polythene-covered mattresses could not be substantiated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome

Sudden infant death syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If anyone can help with getting this information distributed to parents then it would be most appreciated.

Many thanks

Julee Oakley

The UK Cot Life Society

01752 766505