Study: Mowers Injure 9,000 Kids A Year

(WebMD)  More than 9,000 children and teenagers are injured by lawn mowers each year in the U.S., according to a new study.

Researchers say an estimated 140,700 children under age 20 were injured by lawn mowers from 1990 to 2004, and the injury rate has remained relatively steady over the last 15 years.

The most common injuries were cuts, soft tissue injuries (such as scrapes, bad bruises, and sprains), burns, and broken bones.

Researchers say the results show that current lawn mower safety standards are inadequate and most of these injuries could be prevented with improvements, such as:

Designs that prevent the hands and feet from entering the path of the blades under the mower.

Shielding hot mower parts from access by young children.

Equipping all ride-on lawn mowers with a no-mow-in-reverse default feature, which will force the user to look behind the mower before moving backwards.

Lawn Mower Injuries Major Cause of Childhood Injury

In the study, published in Pediatrics, researchers David Vollman, B.S., and Gary A. Smith, M.D., Dr. PH., from Ohio State University estimated the number of injuries caused by lawn mowers in children under age 20 from 1990 to 2004 using information from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

During the 15-year study period, there were an estimated 140,700 lawn mower-related injuries attributed to children treated in hospital emergency rooms — which equates to about 9,400 injuries per year, or just more than 11 injuries per 100,000 children per year in the United States.

More than three-fourths of children injured by lawn mowers were boys, and the average age was just under 11 years.

The most common types of lawn-mower-related injuries were cuts, which accounted for 41 percent of injuries, followed by burns (16 percent), and broken bones (10 percent).

Other findings include:

The most commonly injured body parts were the hands/fingers (nearly 35 percent of all injuries), followed by the legs (19 percent), and then feet/toes (18 percent).

The eyeball/face and upper body accounted for 11 percent and 7 percent of injuries, respectively.

Burns accounted for 35 percent of injuries to the hands and fingers — often as the result of young children touching hot lawn mower parts.

Nearly all of amputation injuries (97 percent) were to the feet/toes (50 percent) and hands/fingers (48 percent).

Researchers say "passive" protection provided by improvements in lawn mower safety design is the best strategy to prevent lawn-mower-related injuries in children, and current safety features are not adequate.

SOURCE: Vollman, D. Pediatrics, August 2006; Vol. 118: pp. e273-e278.

By Jennifer Warner
Reviewed by Louise Chang, M.D.
© 2006, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved

[shoppingnut-2009]

Well here's a wild thought, keep the kids inside the house when the lawn is being mowed. When we were small, the rule was you stay inside the house when the lawn was being mowed and after my dad finished we were allowed out. I'm so sick and tired of American's always blaming manufacturers of not providing enough safety. How about you use your brain that was given to you and create your own safety protocols. Anything that is designed to cut something IS going to be dangerous.

[kwelch42]

This whole thing is blown out of proportion. Lawn mowers are designed to CUT grass. If you restrict the ability of it's designed purpose it takes you longer to do it's designed task. This uses more gas, adding to air pollution, gas prices, and time spent maintaining the yard. Those who are using the mower need to be more responsible in it's operation. There's no doubt that mowers are dangerous, they have sharp spinning blades. They cut anything in their path. They're designed to do that. People need to stop blaming their carelessness on a machine designed to cut things when someone gets hurt. It's too easy to blame our own mistakes on the design safety of some machine. When a mower is being used, no other persons (especially children) are in the mowing area. Mowers can toss out things they hit with deadly force. That reason alone should keep all others out of the mowing area. The operator should, always were eye protection, sturdy shoes, and long pants. These are common sense items, but much of America has none. All of these safety items are listed in the owners manual. I truly believe that the current safety measures of the mower/garden tractors are sufficient. All of them have a instant motor brake/kill switch if the operator lets go of the mower handle, or gets off of the tractor seat while the blades are in motion. They have protected exhaust to prevent burns. Changing the bottom side where the cutting takes place, that's going to far. Signed, A responsible American