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Fireworks for the Fourth Are Best Left to the Pros, Specialists Say
This report from Medpage Today offers a vivid description of the kinds of injuries fireworks can cause in enough detail to make anyone think twice even about sparklers.
These injuries can lead to blindness, to hand injuries which cannot be fully repaired and even death.
The advice of the experts, whose video interviews are provided on the website, is to leave the fireworks to the professionals.
“As Americans gear up for the Fourth of July barbecues and festivities, the nation’s emergency doctors, hand surgeons, and ophthalmologists brace for an influx of patients with fireworks-related injuries.
“The Level I trauma center at the University of Kentucky hospital in Lexington is already crowded during summer months from a wide range of trauma injuries, emergency physician Ryan Stanton, MD, told MedPage Today. But fireworks injuries grow more common as July Fourth approaches.
“About 9,000 fireworks-related injuries resulted in visits to the emergency department in 2009, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Nearly 6,000 of those occurred during the 30 days surrounding the Fourth of July, said CPSC chairman Inez Tenenbaum on press event on the National Mall.
“These injuries may range from simple burns to loss of fingers, other extremities, and even death,” Stanton said.”
Source: Medpage Today, July 3, 2010
