Falling Flat Screen TV Hazard

[John Picard]

Falling flat-screen TVs a growing threat for kids

Nearly 17,000 children were rushed to emergency rooms in 2007, the last year for which complete figures were available, after heavy or unstable furniture fell over on them, a new study reported this month. The study, published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, found that the such injuries had risen 41 percent since 1990.The increase correlated with the popularity of ever-bigger flat-panel televisions that Americans have brought into their homes in that time, along with the entertainment centers and narrow, less-stable stands to hold them. Injuries from televisions alone accounted for nearly half of all injuries related to falling furniture during the study period — 47 percent.
Three-quarters of the victims of falling furniture are younger than 6 years old, and children that age “simply don’t recognize the danger of climbing on furniture,” said Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Remember the old Jeff Foxworthy routine, when he says that in the 1970's, people would put a large tube television on a collapsible dinner tray?


"What if the kids pull on it?"
"Aw hell, first time it falls on them they'll learn to leave it alone."*




*Note: for those of you who are uptight, that was not making light of the death of the little girl in the article, so consider yourself being told ahead of time to "get over yourself".

 

[Neeka Keet]

I don't know why people don't think before they buy the flats screen TVs. My 52" plasma is not only on a stand made to hold large and heavy tv sets, it's also anchored to the stand with the anchors that came with the television set.

 

[Rii]

The solution is to buy television screens so large that children cannot conceivably move them.

 

[Cain]

I hung my TV on the wall for this very reason.

 

[Cain]

I hung my TV on the wall for this very reason.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I don't think my 37' set is heavy enough to harm a child!

I say the same thing to this I say to every article talking about how children could be harmed by an item in the home - it's all about good parenting!

 

[Green Shirt]

The problem is in the flat design. They should make the screens round so they gently rock themselves to the floor when knocked over.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

The problem is in the flat design. They should make the screens round so they gently rock themselves to the floor when knocked over.

Well, that would suck to watch.

I'm not too worried. Eventually, televisions will contain OLED displays and be as thin as a picture frame. Then holograms!

 

[Emher]

Well I have a big ol' 32 inch Sony Trinitron CRT TV, weighs at least 100 pounds! If a kid flips that over themself they're pretty dead. Luckily I don't have kids and neither does anyone I know so I don't think it's that big a risk.

What kicks me though is that I bought that thing to last me for years! One year later flat screens really started arriving on the market. And now HDTV is finally here with a vengeange. So when I have the money I'll be buying the same Samsung LCD HDTV my cousin has, and my trusty Sony will only have laste me a little over seven years after all. Bro will take it though so we can play Battlefield: Bad Company online together though.

 

[RobertVA]

I don't think my 37' set is heavy enough to harm a child!

I say the same thing to this I say to every article talking about how children could be harmed by an item in the home - it's all about good parenting!

The kids could orbit a 37 foot screen

 

[Brikar99]

The TVs aren't a threat to kids - the idiot parents are the threat. You just spent hundreds (if not thousands) on a TV. Spend a couple more to make sure it's not going to fall over, damn it!