As many people purchase new televisions ahead of this weekend’s big football game, it’s important to remember that young children can be injured by falling furniture, including TVs.
“It’s just a natural part of development for young kids to climb on furniture,”Marietta Robinson, with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, says. “Every 30 minutes a child, usually a very young child, is in an emergency room in this country and every two weeks a child dies as a result of furniture tipping over.”
Robinson is the Commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is a government agency responsible for protecting the public from unreasonable dangerous products.
The commission has collected a variety of suggestions about ways to make televisions and other furniture safer for houses with children or those who expect to have children as guests. Those suggestions are available at anchorit.gov.
“There are really easy, simple, inexpensive solutions out there,” she says. “Anchoring your furniture to the wall is something that can easily be done now. There are devices that anyone can use.”
Anyone with a tip for the commission about a product that could be unsafe is asked to respond on saferproducts.gov.
Written By: Ryan Saeler for the Butler Radio Network
