Home Posts tagged "CPSC"

Tag: CPSC

Don’t Let Preventable Injuries Ruin Your Winter Holidays!

Remember the beloved film, A Christmas Story? Nine-year old Ralphie only wants one gift for Christmas – a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass and sundial. The very last present his parents give him is the beloved Red Ryder. Ralphie takes the gun outside, firing at a target perched on a metal sign in the backyard. Unfortunately, the BB ricochets back at him, knocking his glasses off. Ralphie actually thinks he shot his eye out since he cannot see without his glasses. He steps on the glasses while searching for them and they break. He tearfully conceals this fact from his mom, telling her an icicle fell on his face. Every year, thousands of people including children younger than Ralphie suffer injuries from BB and air guns. These aren’t toys, although I’m certain thousands of people will disagree with me on that. I did not have a BB gun as a kid, but I played with a cool, tooled toy cap gun that used a minuscule amount of gunpowder in the caps. I remember loving the way it smelled.

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Five Classic & Timeless Toys That Are Still Around Today… Seriously!

I have written in the past about toys from the 1960s-1970s that would not pass today’s more stringent safety standards. I have also written about how much I loved picking out toys from the Sears Wish Book every holiday season. This post is a tribute to simple toys that are still around today, despite the incredible technological innovations children have at their fingertips. Children these days are often computer literate to some degree before they are out of diapers! They are playing video games and Wii as little tykes and many have tablets with tons of apps. Yet these simple toys have endured for ages and appear to be just as beloved as they were back in the Stone Ages when I was a child! Candy Land Designed by Eleanor Abbott, Candy Land was acquired by Milton Bradley Company (now Hasbro) and first introduced in 1949. My personal love for this game came from the visuals – I loved the candy graphics that appeared on the Candy Land board and little cards, no doubt due to the sweet tooth that was nurtured by my dad. My nostalgia for this game is tied strictly to the visual elements, because the game itself was rather basic and simplistic. I don’t like the newer graphics which look tacky and ostentatious. I am not surprised that a VCR version and electronic version were released in 1986 and 1998, respectively. Licensed versions include Winnie the Pooh, Dora the Explorer, Disney Princesses, and SpongeBob.

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Backyard Toy of Yesteryear Provokes a Torrent of Comments

Backyard Roller Coaster

A few days ago, I posted an ad of a backyard roller coaster on a Facebook page dedicated to advertisements from the 1960’s-1970’s. This ad and another photo were shared by a reader on my Toys from the 1960s-1970s blog. I know nostalgia strikes a chord with many people, but that blog has elicited far more comments and views than anything else I have ever written. Published in December 2013, the blog still generates a good deal of interest. What is even more amazing is that the Facebook post has evoked a torrent of comments, some of which I will share further on in this blog. Reader Robert Jaye shared information about this backyard roller coaster in June 2014: We had a backyard roller coaster set from Montgomery Ward. It was little more than a tubular slide set. The tubes slipped over one another and one climbed to the top of the slide, and sat on a cart with wheels that were molded to ride the tubes. You pushed a release and down you went, all of five or six feet at a gentle slide angle. You rolled on for another five feet before encountering two small bumps that slowed you down before you rolled off into the grass.

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Now I Have One More Thing in Common with Hillary Clinton – Concussion

Although I don’t always agree with her, I admire Hillary Clinton greatly – and we have a few things in common. We both grew up in the Chicago suburbs, are Democrats, and have just one beloved daughter, but now we have one more thing in common. Ironic that when I wrote a press release for a journal article on concussion less than a month ago and mentioned Hillary, that I would be joining her as a concussed patient. I have been researching and writing about this topic since 2004, and I suddenly find myself experiencing this type of traumatic brain injury firsthand. The most underreported, under diagnosed and underestimated head injury is concussion, accounting for 90 percent of traumatic brain injuries, with the number of cases ranging in the millions every year. The brain is a soft organ that is surrounded by spinal fluid and protected by the hard skull. Normally, this fluid acts like a cushion that keeps your brain from banging into your skull. But if you hit your head or body hard, the brain can crash into your skull and sustain an injury. 

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Spectacular Moves in Winter Olympics Elicit Awe and Lead to Inevitable Injuries

As I watch some of the events in the 2014 Winter Olympics, I am amazed at the moves that these athletes attempt and master. Olympic events that are new additions, or relatively new, have spawned unbelievable feats of grace and athleticism, while other sports have progressed so much that one has to wonder if this generation of athletes is genetically modified. I find myself gasping at the jumps and lifts in pairs figure skating, and incredible flips and moves in events such as slopestyle skiing and snowboarding, aerial skiing, and snowboarding half-pipe. And let’s not forget the great speed in skeleton and luge and the brutal impact freestyle moguls must have on knees and other body parts. If you have been watching, you know that quite a few athletes have already been injured, while others have taken nasty spills, but seemingly are alright. Somehow I think that more than their egos are bruised.

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Toys from the 1960s-1970s That Would Never Pass Modern Safety Tests … or Are Just Too Lame for Today’s Kids

With Christmas just around the corner and millions of kids eagerly waiting to open presents, I thought it was a good time to look back at a few toys of the past. Considering the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) didn’t exist before 1972, late Baby Boomers got away with playing with a lot of toys in the 1960s-early 1970s that would never pass muster today. Some of these were toys I blogged about when I was waxing nostalgic for the Sears Wish Book of my youth. Kids who have been playing computer games since they were in diapers, with all sorts of other high-tech toys at their disposal, would likely turn up their noses at a few beloved toys of yesteryear. Bicycles Without a doubt, the most dangerous toy of the 1960s-1970s was not a toy at all, but a bicycle. And biking continues to be a dangerous activity, but at least far more kids are wearing helmets now. Still, according to the CPSC, there were 276,425 children 18 and younger treated for bicycle-related injuries at U.S. hospital emergency rooms in 2012. I cannot remember anyone wearing a bike helmet when I was a kid and somehow my friends and I all escaped with minor injuries. It’s not that we were more resilient or had harder skulls – it’s because no injury surveillance systems were in place monitoring these injuries. Deadly biking accidents weren’t publicized and if any prevention organizations existed, they certainly weren’t as active as they are today. My friend Myra once fell off her bike and suffered some bad scrapes on both knees and an elbow. And I had an incident with younger boys in the neighborhood chasing me on their bikes and trying to knock me off mine. I was wearing flip-flops (I know, really brilliant), and when one of…

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Sports, Sports, Sports – A Bit of Prevention Goes a Long Way to Beating Sports-Related Injuries

   The last month has been jam-packed with a lot of exciting play for sports fans. The Miami Heat clinched its second straight NBA title by beating the San Antonio Spurs on June 20 in Game 7, 95-88. The Chicago Blackhawks snagged its second Stanley Cup in three years in Game 6 of the NHL finals in Boston on June 24 in a rousing finish with back-to-back goals. There were injuries, naturally – such as a collision in Game 6 of the NBA Finals that caused Dwyane Wade’s left knee to swell very badly when he was already suffering with an injured right knee. Chicago Blackhawks Captain Jonathan Toews got hit in the head and sat out part of Game 5, while Andrew Shaw took a puck to the face in the first period of Game 6, but returned in the second period after receiving stitches. For those that enjoy their spectator sports with a bit more starch and less blood, how about Wimbledon, which officially started on June 24 with fifth-ranked Rafael Nadal getting knocked out for the very first time in the first round of a Grand Slam! On June 20, Abby Wambach broke Mia Hamm’s record for international career goals by a soccer player, scoring four times in the first half against South Korea to increase her total to 160. While I was watching her the next day on Good Morning America with a recap of one of the goals she scored by heading the ball, I thought about the number of sports- and recreation-related injuries and concussions suffered every year by professional and amateur athletes alike.

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Whaaaat was He/She Thinking – Fact Stranger than Fiction

In a professional capacity, I have been privy to eye and head injury statistics over the last 10 years. During the time period that I was researching and promoting injury prevention, reality shows arose like Jackass, Scarred, and World of Stupid, as well as video games such as Grand Theft Auto. These glorify idiotic and dangerous behaviors and I find them revolting. I spoke firsthand to the physicians who treated horrific injuries caused by idiotic antics such as hot dogging on skateboards and car surfing. On the lighter side, sitcoms sometimes portray injuries with hilarity – a case in point is the Seinfeld episode called The Fusilli Jerry. Kramer makes pasta sculptures of his friends including one of Jerry using Fusilli pasta. George’s dad Frank falls on the Fusilli Jerry and they have to take him to a proctologist to have it removed.

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