Child Safety | Roman Blinds Direct
Accidents due to blind cord strangulation are an all too common occurrence throughout the world, and devastatingly the number of innocent lives lost due to this is increasing.
Sara (O’Dacre) Lauer- Health Canada states that: “Children can be entangled in pull cords or inner cords while sleeping or playing in cribs or beds under the window covering; they can also climb furniture to reach cords. Often strangulation occurs silently, and by the time a parent or caregiver checks on the child, it is too late to prevent death or injury”
National Child Safety Week: Saving Lives
National Child Safety Week is a great time to generate awareness on this topic, and although they focus on protecting children from any accidents, illnesses and unnecessary harm, the issue of blind cord safety should be emphasised. So with this in mind Roman Blinds Direct have decided to give away thousands of child safety devices, you can claim yours by clicking on this link: http://www.roman-blinds-direct.co.uk/pages/child-safety
Strangulation from ropes, dummy wires or blind cords can be a real danger if you have active and lively children. Therefore we need to find ways to reduce the risk of this happening to our children.
- “The safest window coverings are ones that have no cords that you can see or touch.”
- “If there are corded window coverings in the home, make sure the cords are up high and out of reach of children.”
- “Never put a crib, bed, highchair, playpen or any piece of furniture that a child may climb near a window or patio where there is a blind or curtain cord.”
- “Follow manufacturer’s installation guide and use instructions when installing window blinds. For example, if a tension device is provided with the product, the tension device should always be installed to make the cord taut as per the installation instruction” Sara (O’Dacre) Lauer- Health Canada
“It takes 10 seconds for a child to lose consciousness and they can die within 50 seconds of becoming entangled in a cord” Arron O’Conell- Window Blind Safety
`In 2010 alone, at least four young children have been strangled by blind cords’ -Capt.org.
This is something which is becoming more common in younger children and especially toddlers who are finding their feet, who are also learning how to hold on to things to pull themselves up.
In order to begin to reduce the risk of blind cord/ chain related injuries, awareness needs to be created to highlight the risks which blind cords and chains pose to children.
Trading Standards Institute is teaming up with 28 other organisations to call for a pan-European accident and injury database.
The United Kingdom lost its accident and injury database more than 10 years ago – and due to this, the Trading Standards Institute has since been supporting other campaigns to reinstate such a system.
Chairman of the Trading Standards Institute Christine Heemskerk said: “Comprehensive injury and accident data would help highlight areas of concern to enable authorities to take appropriate action to help prevent accidents and improve product safety. All such data we are now working on in the UK is 10 years old, and therefore doesn’t for example include the blind cord tragedies that took another child’s life as recently as a few weeks ago. Had we had a database in place we could have acted on this intelligence much quicker – some of these fatal accidents could have been prevented.”
“An enormous effort was put both by the manufacturers, testing laboratories and the Consumer Representatives to amend the existing standards for internal blinds and other types of coverings to ensure that products produced according to them are safe for children as far as risk of strangulation is concerned” Karolina Krzystek Programme manager CEN
Roman blinds direct are working to reduce the number of injuries caused by window blind cords; we want to help and support local charities and families in a bid to prevent this from happening.
Additional reading and references
http://www.capt.org.uk/resources/talking-about-strangulation
http://www.cencenelec.eu/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/index.cfm
product_safety/607/window_blind_cord_danger_to_small_childrenhttp://www.windowblindsafety.ie/
https://mdportal.lpch.org/healthday/article.jsp?cat=news&id=675981
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/15/toddler-hanged-roller-blind-cord-hoegh
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21564412
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