Pediatricians are sounding the alarm about three products that have increasingly or frequently landed children in the emergency room.
According to research presented this weekend at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference, children are being burned by hair styling tools, swallowing tiny magnets found in desk toys and hurting themselves on electric scooters.
The researchers called on parents, schools and regulators to help reduce those risks.
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death among children in the United States, and some of those deaths “stem from things in the household that could potentially be dangerous,” said Dr. Brandon Rozanski, a pediatric resident at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.
The products highlighted in the new research, of course, are not the only ones that pose threats. Breast pillows, chairs and swings have also been associated with suffocation in babies, while water beads and coin or button batteries can be life-threatening if children ingest them.
“Unfortunately, there are some products that by themselves pose a danger to a child,” said Dr. Leah Middelberg, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
The dangers of swallowing powerful magnets
Middelberg’s research highlights the dangers of small, round high-strength magnets — also known as “rare-earth magnets” — often sold as desk toys. Touching the balls or beads is said to help relieve stress in adults, but children may accidentally swallow. them or insert them into their noses or ears.
“They come in tens to hundreds in these little bunches where easily a couple can come free and get caught in the rug and a child can pick them up,” Middelberg said.
Doctors are especially concerned about children ingesting more than one magnet, as two can strongly attract and pinch body tissue. This, in turn, can cause internal bleeding, twisting or blockage in the intestines, infection or death.
High-powered magnets are “definitely up there with things that I’m very concerned about kids getting,” Middelberg said.
Her research, based on data from 25 U.S. children’s hospitals from 2017 to 2019, identified nearly 600 cases in which people 21 or younger swallowed high-powered magnets or inserted them into their noses or ears. Almost half required a procedure such as surgery or endoscopy, Middelberg said.
Kari Schuttler Vicario said her son, Brody Franzen, accidentally swallowed two high-powered magnets at school more than three years ago when he was in the sixth grade.
“There were two small circular ones that he tried to put on the top and bottom of the tip of his tongue,” Vicario said. “They slipped off the top and connected, and then he, out of shock, just swallowed them.”
Franzen reported the incident to the school nurse, she said. They went to the hospital, where doctors put a tube down Brody’s throat and a camera into his stomach to retrieve the magnets. He spent the night in the hospital but made a full recovery.
“If he hadn’t said something as soon as he did or waited a day, it could have been a lot worse,” Vicario said.
Middelberg said there has been a “huge increase” in magnet-related injuries and calls to US poison centers since 2017. The previous year, a federal appeals court overturned a mandate from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission that required magnet sets to be too large. swallow or too weak to cause internal injuries.
The commission passed a new mandate last year with similar requirements that remains in place, but Middelberg said researchers still aren’t sure if injuries have decreased as a result.
“We’re hoping that injuries and exposures will go down like they did the last time the rule was in place,” she said.
Kiloffers: a burn hazard for young children
Electric hair styling tools can send children to the emergency room, Rozanski said, because accidentally touching them can cause first- or second-degree burns. Curling irons and hair straighteners can reach temperatures of up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit within minutes of being plugged in.
Rozanski’s research, which was based on data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, estimated that there were 31,000 burns from hair styling tools among people aged 24 and younger from 2013 to 2022. Most of the people injured were 10 or younger, and the great majority did not need to be hospitalized; however, Rozanski estimated that more than 1,000 of the incidents resulted in emergency department visits.
“Developmentally, children under 10, they will be curious, they will reach for things. They don’t necessarily have the learned ability of ‘Hey, that could be dangerous. That’s hot,’” Rozanski said.
He recommended that parents keep electric hair styles out of children’s reach until they become teenagers.
Teenage boys fall or crash while riding electric scooters
As electric scooters have become popular, they’ve also caused more injuries, according to research from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or CHOP.
From 2020 to 2021, researchers found, the number of children and teenagers injured on electric scooters rose by 71% in the US Emergency departments reported more than 13,500 such injuries during the two-year period, often among boys aged 16 to 18 years.
Head injuries such as fractures were the most common type, the researchers found. Almost 67% of children who suffered head injuries from electric scooters were not wearing helmets.
Some scooter injuries involved car accidents, while others came after riders hit potholes or uneven ground.
Over the summer, 16-year-old Anthony Greco hit a pothole while riding his electric scooter home from work.
“The scooter started to lose control, and I felt like I was going to fall off. I tried to jump and save myself, and then I landed right on my ankle, and it just snapped,” he said.
Antonio broke his leg and sought care at CHOP. The wound was so severe and gross that doctors considered amputation, but they were able to perform reconstructive surgery.
“His father is an above-the-knee amputee, so we’re already living that life. To have that for our son as well, that was a really scary thought,” said his mother, Krystine Greco.
Dr. J. Todd Lawrence, the pediatric orthopedic surgeon who treated Anthony at CHOP and oversaw the research, said many children visit the emergency room for similar circumstances. But the majority of electric scooter injuries are “minor bumps and bruises, things that are pretty easy to treat,” he said.
To prevent injuries, the researchers suggested adding more bike and scooter lanes in suburban and urban areas, teaching children safe riding practices, and educating drivers about keeping safe distances from scooters.
Lawrence said parents should also consider buying scooters with sizes and speeds appropriate for their teens.
“If you’re going to have your 15-year-old teenage boy ride it, they don’t need one that’s going 55 miles an hour,” he said.
According to the Greco family, however, children should not ride electric scooters at all.
“If I see someone on an electric scooter, I think to myself, ‘How can you even do that now?'” Anthony said. “I see all the casualties that can happen while they’re on it.”