Paper Shredder Danger For Kids, Pets

(CBS)  The paper shredders families buy to protect them from identity theft could also put their kids and pets in danger.

The Early Show consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen says Americans spent more than $400 million dollars on the machines last year.

But the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning about shredders after receiving dozens of reports of children being injured.

Between 2000 and 2005, the CPSC got 50 reports of youngsters losing fingers and sustaining finger lacerations. That got the attention of officials, and the agency is now pushing for tougher safety standards, Koeppen reports.

The CPSC says children under the age of 12 are most at risk of being injured by paper shredders, because they tend to have fingers small enough to get caught in the openings where paper is inserted in the shredders.

Lisa Broadfoot, of Irving, Texas, told Koeppen a shredder "basically mutilated my child's hand."

Broadfoot never imagined the small shredder in her home could do what it did to her son, Talan, Koeppen points out.

He was helping her shred documents when his fingers got sucked into the shredder.

"He screamed, and then was begging me to get his hands out of this machine, saying, 'Please, Mommy, please, Mommy, get my hand out.' He was just screaming and crying and begging," Broadfoot recalled.

She rushed Talan to the hospital, with the shredder still attached.

"They started cutting the blades, because there was no other way to get his fingers undone," Broadfoot said. "It was like he could feel it, because he just started screaming again, and I'm holding him and trying to explain to him that, 'It's gonna be OK, it's going to be OK.' "

Talan had to have three fingers amputated.

"This," remarked CPSC chairman Hal Stratton to Koeppen, "is the kind of injury trend that makes us take notice.

"The reason we're seeing these injuries is people are buying more paper shredders, and frankly, I thin they're buying the kind of shredders that are really developed for the business environment. Manufacturers weren't really contemplating the fact that people were gonna put them in their offices at home, where kids would have access to them."

CPSC workers showed Koeppen how easily kids can get hurt.

Using a rubber stick, the size of a small child's finger, they fed paper into several popular shredders. The finger-sized stick fit right into paper insertion gaps and got sucked in.

"We want to see a revised standard that narrows that opening and makes it more difficult for kids to get their fingers caught," Stratton told Koeppen.

And kids are not the only ones at risk.

Sandy Clarke's dog lost chunks of his tongue after he started licking the paper shredder in her home office in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

"I still can't believe it," she told to Koeppen. "When I turned around, his tongue was already stuck in it. … He was screaming and yelping and trying to get out of the house."

It took her 15 minutes to get his tongue loose.

Now, she's much more careful with her shredder.

"They need to be unplugged, not just turned off, not just picked up; they need to be unplugged and kept away from children and animals," Clarke observed.

Broadfoot says she'll never allow a shredder in her home again.

And Talan still has a hard time believing his fingers are gone for good.

"There are still times to this day," Broadfoot said, "he'll be looking at his hand and go, 'Mommy, when are my fingers gonna grow back like the others?' "

The manufacturer of the shredder that injured Talan no longer makes that model, Koeppen says.

Koeppen showed The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm examples of shredders that are now coming onto the market with safety devices built in.

The Fellowes Powershred DS1 has an electronic sensor that knows when a finger gets too close to the paper insertion opening, and stops the shredding action.

And the Royal PX110MX, which can take in as many as 11 sheets of paper at once, has a metal strip along its opening that keeps objects as large as fingers from getting in.