Every three weeks a child dies from a tipped-over TV, says consumer group Safe Kids Worldwide. The group found that just 27 percent of parents had seen media reports about the danger, despite the fact that a cluster of TV tip-over deaths among children in the Chicago area made national news this year. Flat screens fall on kids, too.
Falling TV sets have killed more than 200 children since 2000. An update today from the Consumer Product Safety Commission shows that 29 people in the U.S., most of them kids, were killed by falling TVs in 2011, among the worst years on record. And 18,000 people a year, most of them children, are treated for injuries from falling TVs, the commission says.
It's happening despite the widespread switch to lighter flat-screens. Safety experts say the switch may actually be making the problem worse, because consumers often take old, heavy sets out of their family rooms and put them atop unstable bedroom dressers and playroom shelves.
"Children will climb up on furniture to try to turn the TV on, and there goes the heavy television as well as the piece of furniture," says Inez Tenenbaum, chairman of the commission.
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