- Hidden Danger: Ceiling Fan-Related Injuries in Children
- Alarming Statistics and Overlooked Risks
- Age Groups Most Vulnerable to Ceiling Fan Injuries
Raising your kid on your shoulders or head is fun, but a rotating ceiling fan is dangerous.
Experts warn that children impacting ceiling fans are commonly overlooked and can cause serious harm or death.
According to a study published in Paediatrics, emergency rooms treated 20,500 ceiling fan-related injuries between 2013 and 2021.
Ceiling fan head injuries send 2,300 children to emergency rooms each year, according to the CPSC.
According to a study published in Paediatrics, deep wounds were the most prevalent ceiling fan-related injury treated in emergency rooms, accounting for three out of five of these cases. Between 5 and 18 percent of cases involved skull fractures.
However, it is likely that many more have gone uncounted.
Dr. Holly Hughes Garza, the principal investigator and epidemiologist at the Dell Children’s Trauma and Injury Research Centre in Austin, Texas, told MedicalXPress.com: ‘It’s essential to remember that we only examined children who sought medical attention for their injury, so we’re not talking about every child who hit their head on a fan.
There are likely a great number of children who experience this but do not seek medical attention.
The study found that ceiling fan head injuries are more likely in infants and children under four.
Younger children were twice as likely as older children to be damaged by adults when lifted or thrown.
Dr. Garza noted that very young children, including infants, can be struck by a ceiling fan when an adult lifts or propels them into the air with the intention of colliding with the fan.
The ceiling may be low enough for the child to strike the fan if he or she is lifted up inadvertently, or if someone is playingfully lifting the child and is unaware that the ceiling fan is present.
Although many of these injuries are treatable, others may result in fatalities.
In 2019, a stepfather in Argentina inadvertently killed his six-month-old daughter by throwing her into the ceiling fan while playing with her.
In the same year, a two-year-old Malaysian girl perished of the same cause.
Dr. Garza said many kids sleep in bunk or loft beds or other equipment near ceiling fans.
We grow accustomed to how our spaces appear. She stated that the bed is configured, positioned, and may be partially under the fan.
“You don’t really give it much thought, so when you put two and two together, you realise that the 3-foot-high bed is sitting directly beneath a 2-foot-drop fan on an 8-foot ceiling.”
If my seven-year-old stands on the bed’s edge, there will be a problem.
