by
Claudia Boyd-Barrett
posted in Parenting
When childproofing your home, don’t forget the window blinds.
A new report published in the journal Pediatrics found that window coverings – typically those with dangling cords – send almost 2 kids a day to the emergency room.
Almost 17,000 kids under age 6 went to hospital because of window blind injuries between 1990 and 2015, researchers found. Many of the kids got tangled up in the cords.
The injuries were usually cuts, bruises and scrapes to the head. But sometimes the injuries were more serious. About once a month a child died from a window-blind injury, usually because they strangled themselves with a cord, the report found.
Often, injuries happened while parents were in the home but had left kids unsupervised for a few minutes. The children had been put to sleep, or were playing or watching television by themselves.
Since researchers only looked at injuries resulting in emergency room visits, it’s likely there were more window-blind injuries that went unreported.
Window blind manufacturers can follow voluntary safety standards, but they don’t have to.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has proposed mandatory standards, but so far these haven’t been approved. The standards would require manufacturers to make window coverings cordless, or with cords that children can’t reach.
Doctors interviewed by Reuters said child-safety kits designed to keep blinds out of reach don’t always work. They offered the following suggestions for keeping kids safe around window blinds:
• Keep an eye on your kids if you have window coverings with cords.
• If you can, replace window blinds that have dangling cords with cordless blinds or blinds with inaccessible cords, focusing on rooms where your children spend the most time.
• Move furniture away from windows so your kids can’t easily climb up and reach window blinds.
• Aim baby monitors or cameras in the direction of windows at night or at other times when you leave your child alone in a room.
Have you taken steps to childproof your window coverings? What have you found most effective?
The post Window blinds can be hazardous for kids appeared first on BabyCenter Blog.
