Toy-related injuries to children account for one U.S. emergency room admission every 3 minutes. As we enter the peak season for purchasing children’s toys for the holidays, we hope to help you choose safe toys for the children in your life.

Statistics

• Between 1990 and 2011, 3,278,073 children were treated in Emergency Rooms for toy-related injuries.
• In 2011, a child was treated for a toy-related injury every 3 minutes.
• Slightly more than half of those injuries affected a child under the age of 5.
• During this 22-year period, the rate of injury increased by almost 40%.
• Much of the increase in injury rate was connected with foot-powered scooters.

Differing Ages, Different Injuries

At different ages, children encounter different injury risks.

• Age 3 and under is the time when the major risk is choking on small toys and small toy parts.
• As children get older riding toys become particularly dangerous. These are foot-powered scooters, wagons, and tricycles. They accounted for 42% of injuries to 5 to 17-year-olds and 28% of injuries to children under the age of 5.
• Injuries with riding toys were 3 times more likely to involve a dislocation or broken bone.
• The most common injuries to children of all ages with any toys were falls (46%) and collisions (22).

Scooter Problems

Between 2000 and 2011, when a new kind of foot-powered scooter became popular, there were approximately 580,037 related injuries to children. This amounts to about 1 every 11 minutes. These injuries were a significant part of the increase in the number of toy-related injuries across the board.

Keeping Children Safe When Playing with Toys

There are things you can do to help children play safely with their toys. This begins with the choice of toys. It includes ensuring that appropriate safety gear is purchased with a toy.

• Buy and allow children to play only with age-appropriate toys.
• Look for small parts that children could choke on before purchasing a toy.
• Allow children to play on riding toys only on flat surfaces separated from car and truck traffic.
• Supervise any child younger than 8 years when playing on a riding toy.
• Provide and insist that children wear safety gear: helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, mouth guards.
• Prohibit toys that could contain toxic substances.
• Supervise a child if s/he is playing with a toy that could spray liquid on the child or into the child’s eyes or burn the child’s skin.
• Insist that children never play with toys on stairways, in driveways or on a steep slope.
• Monitor recalls of toys you might plan to purchase or toys you already have in your home.

What We Will Do

Because we hate to see any child hurt, we will do what we can to help you protect your children.

We will continue to share information about toy-related injuries to children in our blog and on our social media pages.

We will continue to report recalls of toys and other items on social media. We do this on the day a recall is issued or the next day.

Call Altizer Law, P.C., If You Need Us

We sincerely hope that you never need a personal injury attorney because of an injury to a child. We fight aggressively whenever a damaged or defective product causes harm to anyone. We are particularly aggressive when a child has been injured. We have represented people of all ages injured by the negligence or wrongdoing of others for more than 30 years. Bettina Altizer and her team understand that an injury lawsuit is about the money.