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Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Nearly 20,000 children in the United States are treated in hospital emergency rooms every year for injuries caused by furniture or a television falling or tipping over, a study published Thursday by the journal Injury Epidemiology found. About 70% of these injuries occur in children age 6 or younger, according to researchers from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
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More than 560,000 children suffered injuries in furniture- or TV-related accidents between 1990 and 2019, the data showed.
In 2019 alone, nearly 12,000 children were injured in these incidents, which is an average of one child every 46 minutes, the researchers said.
"Young children often see dressers and other types of furniture as climbing opportunities," study co-author Dr. Gary Smith said in a press release.
"They pull out a drawer and use it as a step, and that often leads to the furniture tipping over on top of them, [which] can result in very serious injuries and even death," said Smith, director of Nationwide's Center for Injury Research and Policy.
In the United States, a child visits the ER every 60 minutes as a result of falling furniture, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
On average, two to three children nationally die every month as a result of falling televisions, furniture or appliances, the commission estimates.
The findings are based on an analysis of ER visits related to injuries involving children age 18 years and younger in the United States over a 30-year period.
Nearly half, or 47%, of all injuries reported during the study period were to the head or neck area, the data showed.
Children age 6 and younger were nearly twice as likely to sustain a concussion or closed head injury in furniture-related incidents than older patients.
Some 3% of the 560,200 children treated over the 30-year period were admitted to the hospital for additional treatment of their injuries, with 82% of them age 6 or younger.
TV tip-overs accounted for 41% of these injuries, with three-fourths of them involving children age 6 and younger, though the frequency of these injuries has declined since 2010.
Roughly 10% of TV-related injuries also involved simultaneous furniture tip-overs.
Injuries associated with tip-overs of clothing storage units such as dressers and wardrobes represented about 17% of injuries included in the study.
Current voluntary safety standards to prevent tip-overs of these types of furniture are inadequate because they use a weight that is less than that of many 6-year-old children and do not take many household conditions into account, the researchers said.
A bill called the STURDY Act is making its way through Congress and, if approved, it would require development of a mandatory safety standard to protect children age 6 and younger from clothing storage unit tip-over injuries and death.
To keep children safe, Nationwide recommends several steps, including securing furniture to the wall, the researchers said.
"[Our] study found that children under 6 were at an especially high risk of injury to the head and neck. While straps and anchors are absolutely important and parents should use them, we need to do much more to prevent these injuries -- we need manufacturers to step up and make their products more stable to begin with," he said.
