Save the children | Philadelphia Inquirer | 2011-11-04
Flat-screen televisions can easily tip onto youngsters. Button batteries for remote controls can choke kids. Electrical cords can ensnare and strangle babies.
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), an estimated 25,300 children were treated in emergency departments because of falling televisions, furniture, and appliances between 2008 and 2010. Injuries to the under-18 set represented 58 percent of all instability-related injuries in those two years.
Of those reported incidents, 44 percent involved falling TVs.
The CPSC also has seen cases of injuries from children swallowing button batteries, whose use in the home has increased. And electrical cords, which have multiplied with each new invention, continue to pose risks.
"A lot of these injuries are preventable," Metzger said. "Of course, no [safety] product is a replacement for adult supervision. But it makes adult supervision easier."
Veronica Chavez has asked Metzger back this day, his third visit, to secure the 37-inch flat-screen TV in the finished basement, adjacent to the play area for her son, Jonas, 3½, and daughter, Siena, 1 year old and on the verge of walking.
Car Seats: Rear or Forward Facing?
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended that parents and caregivers keep their children riding rear-facing in car seats until age two, not 1-year-old as previously recommended.
While the statistics show that by doing so will keep their children safer, many parents became quite distressed by the news and many were not eager to embrace the latest medical advice about how best to protect children from serious head, neck and spinal injuries.
On an unusually warm Wednesday in October, I spent the day at the Essex County Car Seat Fitting Station located at 120 Dorsa Ave. in Livingston to take the temperature of both the Certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians who volunteer at the site and the parents and caregivers who visit the station on this question. On the whole, most parents were OK with keeping their child rear-facing longer.
Expecting or first time parents with their wide-eyed enthusiasm were eager to embrace the instruction and left the station blissfully ignorant of the challenges of parenting.
