Toys are thought to be children's object of refuge, especially in times when parents are too busy to engage in some playful moments with them. Toys are simply the most convenient attention grabber for children to be "busy" in times when everyone in the household is busy as well. However, a study reveals that toys aren't as child-friendly as parents presumed to be.
Ove three million U.S. children have suffered from toy injury and have been treated in emergency departments, according to a study that looked into toy-related injuries from 1990 to 2011. The study found that in 2011, a child was treated every three minutes for a toy injury, with more than half of the injuries occurred in children younger than age five. Reports also said that during the time of the study, injury rates increased by almost 40 percent, and a large portion of those increases in injuries were related to foot-powered scooters.
"A child's job is play, and toys are the tools," says Gary Smith, MD, PhD, the study's senior author and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "We want children to explore, challenge themselves, and develop while using those tools safely."
According to the study, children younger than three are said to be at a greater risk of choking on small toys or small toy parts. The study found 109,000 incidents of children younger than age five swallowing or inhaling "foreign bodies" such as small toys, which breaks down to almost 14 cases a day.
Riding toys such as foot-powered scooters, wagons, and tricycles, cause 42 percent of injuries to children ages five to 17. Riding toys caused 28 percent of injuries in children younger than age five. Also, injuries on riding toys were three times as likely to cause a broken bone or dislocation when compared with other toys.
The most common ways children of all ages were injured were falls (46 percent) and collisions (22 percent); these were the most common ways that children of all ages were injured in association with toys of all categories.
Of special concern are foot-powered scooters, especially since 2000, when a new kind of foot-powered scooter became trendy. There have been an estimated 580,037 injuries, or about one in every 11 minutes, associated with the new foot-powered scooter. Still, "much of the increase in the overall toy injury rate after 1999 is due to foot-powered scooters," reports said.
"The frequency and increasing rate of injuries to children associated with toys, especially those associated with foot-powered scooters, is concerning," explains Smith. "This underscores the need for increased efforts to prevent these injuries to children. Important opportunities exist for improvements in toy safety standards, product design, recall effectiveness, and consumer education."
