Shopping Cart Injuries to Children
In a study performed by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, it was found that a high number of injuries happen to children when shopping carts are involved.
The study calculated between 1990 and 2011, about 66 children were treated in emergency rooms throughout the country every day following a shopping cart-related injury. That means a child is injured in an encounter with a shopping cart every 22 minutes.
What’s causing the injuries?
A study that appeared in Clinical Pediatrics in January noted that more than 70 percent of these injuries occurred during a fall into or over the shopping cart, carts that tipped over, or getting trapped in the shopping cart. The most common area of the child’s body to be injured was his or her head.
Soft-tissue injuries were the most common for head injuries, but the number of children who suffer concussions and head injuries has increased by more than 200 percent over the length of the study period.The ages of children most likely to be injured in a shopping cart were from 0 to 4 years of age.
It seems evident that safety requirements for shopping carts are not adequate, especially since the research indicates that more children are being injured every year instead of fewer. With the number of concussions and head injuries on the rise, physicians are pushing for more safety regulations and holding retailers more accountable for shopping cart safety.