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School Safety Concerns
When your child is at school, out of your own supervision, their safety is a big concern. Parents, teachers, and caregivers should all be on the lookout for hidden hazards to help prevent injuries or deaths to children. With the help of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), here are some tips and facts that we all should be well aware of:
ü Check out the playgrounds. Start by looking at the surfaces underneath the playground equipment. There should be a 12-inch depth of wood chips, sand, pea gravel, or mulch, to prevent head injury if a child falls. More than 200,000 children are treated in the hospital’s emergency rooms for playground related injuries. Usually it’s from falling off of equipment. Check out the soccer goals as well. Make sure they are well-anchored into the ground to keep from falling and crushing a child. The CPSC has received reports of 24 deaths from soccer goals tipping over.
ü Check drawstrings on hoods. You may want to consider cutting them off. Twenty-two children have died since 1985 because of drawstrings getting caught on school bus doors, playground equipment, and other products.
ü Be alert of loops on window blind cords. Many childcare facilities and schools have blinds on the windows. If there are blinds in your home, cut the loop on the two-corded horizontal blinds, and attach separate tassels to prevent strangulation and entanglement in window blind cords. If you have vertical blinds, drapery cords, or continuous loop systems, which use looped cords to function, do not cut these loops. Install a permanent tie-down device instead. About one child every month dies from window cord strangulation.
ü If your child rides a bike to school, make sure they always wear their helmet. All United States imported helmets are required to meet the new federal safety standards set by CPSC. More than 200 children a year are killed by accidents involved with a bike. Of these deaths, 60% involve head injury. With the use of a helmet, it could reduce the risk of head injury by up to 85%.
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