ET ISSUE 2204 Thursday 7 June 2001

The danger that lurks on your kitchen table
By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent

READING this story is more likely to damage your health than using a chainsaw, according to a Government report that also warns of an alarming increase in the number of accidents caused by tea cosies, place mats and socks.

If you are also wearing wellington boots while holding a loofah and standing near a birdbath, then the chances of even finishing this sentence uninjured are worryingly small. The latest report from the Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System, published by the Department of Trade and Industry, reveals that in 1999 leaves, birdbaths and sponges and loofahs posed far more of a menace to health than rat poison or meat cleavers.

Printed publications injured far more people than chainsaws - 4,371 compared with 1,207 - while tea cosy injuries almost doubled in 1999, up from 20 in the previous year to 37. However, the report gives no details of how these apparently innocuous household items managed to hurt people admitted to hospital.

The frightening scale of the menace posed by wellington boots (5,615 injuries) and sponges and loofahs (966) becomes clear when the same report reveals that meat cleavers caused 329 injuries in the same period and 439 people were harmed by rat or mouse poison.

The report, compiled by logging the accidents reported by people admitted to a sample group of hospitals and then extrapolating estimates for the whole country, found that the number of people going to hospital after a trouser accident is worryingly high. In 1999, trousers caused 5,945 accidents, 808 more than in 1998.

The trend was balanced only by the drop in injuries inflicted by armchairs, down from 18,690 to 16,662. Nevertheless, armchair injuries "leave little room for complacency", New Scientist says today, adding that injuries inflicted by vegetables "remain unacceptably high" at 13,132. Hospital admissions caused by socks and tights rose from 9,843 to 10,773, while birdbath accidents almost trebled to 311.

Roger Vincent, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: "We never cease to be amazed by the way in which people manage to injure themselves, but it remains the case that home accidents are still the major cause of injuries in this country. Nearly three million people are injured in the home every year and 4,000 of them die."

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001