Articles Posted in Injuries to Minors

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An account in The Oregonian this week of a bereaved mother suing both a property management company and a window blind manufacturer in the wake of the death of her 3-year-old daughter is drawing attention to yet another preventable household safety hazard.

According to the newspaper, the toddler was visiting a family friend with her mother in February 2015 “when she became entangled in a dangling cord.” The girl’s mother “was in the same room with her, but hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late, said a lawyer for the estate.” The suit targets both the property management company that ran the apartment complex in Clackamas, and “blind manufacturer Newell Window Furnishings for allegedly allowing cords longer than 7-1/4 inches to hang from the window covering at the apartment complex” the newspaper reports. That length is the standard recommended by Parents for Window Blind Safety and other advocacy groups.

What is particularly striking about this case is the revelation that the management company allegedly failed “to remove dangerous cords from the apartment even after recalls and retrofitting efforts initiated by blinds makers in 1994 and again in 2000.” One has to ask, however, if the industry has been aware of this critical safety issue for more than 20 years, why are blinds with dangerously long cords still in apartments and homes anywhere?

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Something to consider as summer begins: According to The Oregonian there are “more than 300 carnival rides with valid permits in the state.” But it is worth asking what, exactly, those permits mean. Many Oregonians visiting a traveling carnival this summer may assume that the state permit posted prominently on each ride means it has been inspected by the by a government official for safe operation and maintenance. As the newspaper outlines, however, that is not really the case.

“When it comes to carnival ride regulation, Oregon falls somewhere in the middle, between California – a state with a dense thicket of amusement park and carnival regulations – and Alabama, where regulation is essentially nonexistent,” the newspaper reported recently. “Oregon doesn’t have a government-funded inspection program. Instead it relies on insurance companies to verify that each ride has been inspected and is ready for use.” Carnivals send the forms provided by their insurance companies to the state, pay a $28 fee and, in return, receive their permits from the Oregon Building Codes Division. While federal standards for carnival rides do exist (they are issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission) adherence to them is voluntary, The Oregonian reports.

According to the newspaper, Oregon is lucky in one respect: because Washington has much stricter rules, and because many inspectors work in both states, “almost by default, Oregon ends up following Washington’s more stringent regulations.” The same inspector would be paid by the carnival operator in Oregon but by the state inspections body when working in Washington.

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As Portlanders prepared for the holiday weekend our city’s school system released a statement announcing plans to “turn off all of its drinking fountains and bring in bottled water for drinking and food preparation for the remainder of the school year,” according to an article in today’s Oregonian. The move follows the discovery of elevated lead levels in the water at two local schools: Rose City Park and Creston. What Friday’s statement does not address is why the city schools department has been slow to act – and less than candid with parents – concerning this threat to our children.

According to the newspaper, water at Rose City Park tested at “as much as double the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘action level’ of 15 parts per billion.” What has so many Portland parents concerned is the school Superintendent’s acknowledgement in an email last week that the city has known about this issue for eight weeks and neither turned off the water at the affected schools nor warned parents and employees while repairs were being made.

The city now says it intends to test all Portland’s schools over the summer break. That is critically late in and of itself, especially when one learns that “the last time Portland Public Schools did widespread water quality testing, 15 years ago, the results showed” 35 of the first 40 schools tested had “at least one location” with unacceptably high lead levels. Prior to that 2001 round of testing, the paper reports, “the last documented testing… had taken place in 1991.”

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A newly published report from SafeKids, an organization which regular readers know I have long supported, takes many unsettling facts about teens and cars out of the realm of hearsay. The best way to prevent teen car-related deaths and injuries is to know how and why they occur in the first place. That makes this report essential reading for every Oregon parent.

The report summary begins with an uncomfortable figure: 2138… the number of teens killed in car crashes in 2014 (the most recent year for which full data is available). On the positive side, it notes that “from 1994 to 2013, the rate of teen drivers killed actually decreased by 61 percent” adding that this two decades of progress “demonstrates the effectiveness of prevention efforts by government, industry, the medical community and nonprofits in passing graduated licensing laws, engineering safer cars and raising public awareness about risky behaviors.”

The report goes on to state that “2014, however, saw the death rate begin to increase again and early estimates for 2015 suggest that may continue.” Its main prescription is more of the kind of education and public outreach that has been so effective over time. We have all heard the public information campaigns, but it still needs to be said, and repeated often: avoid distracted driving, don’t overload the car, don’t speed and, perhaps most importantly: always buckle up and never drink and drive.

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A recent article in The Oregonian recounts the story of a 13-year-old Gresham girl severely injured late last month while she and a friend were crossing the street on their way home from school. According to the newspaper the seventh grader and a friend were using a marked crosswalk when a 44-year-old Gresham woman “ran a red light and hit the girls” with her delivery van.

One of the girls “suffered a significant brain injury and several fractures.” The eventual extent of her recovery remains uncertain. The other child was less seriously injured and has been released from the hospital.

The newspaper reports that friends of the severely injured girl’s family have set up a crowdfunding page to help them cope with what are likely to be years of significant expenses in the wake of this Oregon reckless driving crash involving injuries to two children (The Oregonian’s story below includes a link to the GoFundMe page).

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With spring well under way and summer around the corner it is time again for me to remind readers of the importance of window safety and the crucial work done by SafeKids Oregon.

Earlier this month the country marked National Window Safety Week. As SafeKids noted at the time: “windows rank as one of the top five hidden hazards in the home, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.” The good news is that, the group notes, educational efforts do seem to be having an effect: across Oregon “the number of children falling from windows and being admitted to the trauma system (dropped) from a high of 52 children in 2010 to 26 children in 2015.”

While that progress is excellent, more still needs to be done. As SafeKids notes: “Window falls are a preventable cause of injury and death to young children” and the basic ways of stopping them are simple. Parents should remember to keep windows closed and locked when they are not in use, to make sure that children play a safe distance away from open windows and, most importantly, to “stop at 4” – meaning to ensure that open windows are limited to a four inch gap and held in place by window guards (to prevent children from opening them further). Another important tip: if a window can be opened from both the top and the bottom secure the bottom closed and open it only from the top.

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A recent article in the Salem Statesman-Journal highlighted a popular hiking area near the town of Pacific City that has become increasingly dangerous. The newspaper solicited feedback from readers about the best way to make the area around Cape Kiwanda safer.

According to the newspaper, “seven people have died in the popular Oregon coast destination… since 2009, including five during the past eight months. The tragedies have been almost entirely experienced by teenagers, with the average age of victims at 19 years. Most of the time the victims hiked up a sand dune, disregarded fencing and signs, climbed onto a hazardous sandstone bluff and fell into the ocean.”

The article notes that state and county officials are searching for new ways to deal with the problem of drowning in the area. The paper published photos of the existing signs at the Cape, which read simply “Danger: Do not go beyond this point,” and contrasted them with a sign on a different part of the trail which takes a much more forceful approach. That posting reads: “Danger!! Several fatalities have occurred in and around these waters. STAY ON THE TRAIL”

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Last Friday the Oregon Senate unanimously approved “a bill aimed at ensuring that sexual assault evidence is submitted for lab testing in a timely manner and not left untouched on police evidence shelves,” according to a report in The Oregonian. The bill is named for a teenage Northeast Portland girl who was raped and murdered across the street from her home in 2001.

Melissa’s Bill, as it is known, focuses on untested sexual assault kits because of the discovery that “sexual assault kits from at least two other young teens raped by the girl’s killer four years earlier sat on the Portland Police Bureau’s evidence shelves” and were not tested until a connection was drawn between them and the 2001 case. According to the newspaper the girl’s parents hoped that their child’s death would at least lead to a change in police procedures, and to more timely testing of rape and assault kits. When a newspaper investigation revealed that despite the passage of more than a decade little had changed Melissa’s parents went to the legislature.

As described by the paper the bill will require that, beginning next January 1, “each police agency in Oregon shall adopt written policies and procedures concerning the collection, submission for testing and retention of the kits. Under the bill police must pick up the kits within seven days after a hospital alerts them about a kit’s existence and submit them to the state crime lab for testing within 14 days of receipt. All kits must be stored for 60 years.”

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Is there any example of a hot consumer product becoming toxic quite as quickly as the hoverboard? The Oregonian reported this week that retailing giant Amazon “recently pulled the item from its marketplaces” barely three months after hoverboards were the ‘must-have’ gift of the holiday season.

The reason for the change of heart is well-known. As dangerous products go it is hard to imagine any recent consumer item whose fortunes have reversed quite so quickly. Over the course of 2015 the gyroscope-powered toys went from a rare curiosity to a pop-culture phenomenon. Then, just as sales were hitting stratospheric heights, reports – and dramatic videos – emerged of the devices spontaneously bursting into flames (this, as The Oregonian notes, is in addition to “other risks to the public as evidenced from plenty of video compilations prominently featuring people falling off of them.”).

Now, only weeks later, “the obscenely popular holiday gadget was silently and unceremoniously dropped from all Amazon’s electronics pages… the U.S. government recently declared the gadgets an “imminent hazard” and… locally, the University of Oregon banned hoverboards in January, going so far as to supply students with fireproof storage for any of the errant gadgets.”

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A story in The Oregonian this week is especially timely as the legislature considers changes to the ways in which legal recreational marijuana and its derivatives are treated in our state, and serious issues these, in turn, raise concerning injuries to children.

The newspaper recounts how an eight-year-old Klamath Falls boy became sick after eating a marijuana-infused cookie that he found on the ground. The boy’s mother told the paper that after returning from a family trip to a local quarry. “He pulled his chest and made motions that suggested he was choking. He had trouble keeping his eyes open,” the paper reports. It then quotes the mother saying “he said everything looked like a cartoon… He said he was vibrating all over.” A trip to the ER followed, along with five hours of treatment and observations. The boy is now fine.

The broader fallout from this incident may continue for some time, however, and is likely to resonate in the halls of the Oregon legislature in Salem. As The Oregonian notes, “the incident comes as Oregon public health officials and marijuana industry representatives debate the appropriate serving size for marijuana edibles.” Regulators have proposed serving size and concentration levels that are only half of what is allowed by Colorado and Washington “in part to protect novices and children who accidently eat the products.” This particular instance is a case in point: a single cookie contained two adult-size portions of marijuana’s active ingredient, a chemical compound known as THC. Many people unfamiliar with pot cookies or brownies may not be aware that unlike the ordinary versions of the same product one is not supposed to eat the entire thing.

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