Could the furniture in your home pose a deadly hazard to your children?
INSIDE EDITION investigates a little-known household hazard many parents may overlook - furniture that can tip over on top of a child. Each year, more than 5,000 children are crushed when common household furniture falls on them. INSIDE EDITION works with the Good Housekeeping Institute to show parents how to prevent such tragedies, and ask Ron Hazelton, home safety expert and host of television's Ron Hazelton's HouseCalls, to visit families with us in New Jersey for some "Safety Spot Checking" that could save a child's life.
Last July, Wendy Baran tragically discovered a household danger that cost her son Jarod his life. She entered Jarod's room to find him pinned to the ground beneath a piece of furniture. She tells INSIDE EDITION, "I opened the door and saw the dresser on top of Jarod. All I wanted was for him to be breathing and he wasn't." Jarrod died of asphyxiation, his lungs crushed from the weight of the wicker dresser that had fallen on his tiny body. As part of its report, the newsmagazine brings to attention recent cases in Mesa, AZ and Benecia, CA where young children were injured when furniture fell on them. Additionally, the newsmagazine recalls three-year old Gavin Hunt of Jackson, Michigan who died when a dresser fell on top of him in March 2001.
Don Mays, Technical Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute, tells INSIDE EDITION that there are no mandatory tip-over standards for furniture. He explains, "[Manufacturers] don't necessarily inform the public of what the hazard is, and, a lot of times, they don't put warnings on the furniture to tell people that there are serious tip-over risks." Mays demonstrates an easy and inexpensive fix for the hazard of furniture tip-overs - brackets that anchor the furniture to floors and walls.
INSIDE EDITION asked Ron Hazelton, home safety expert, to see if these hazards exist in the average home. Hazelton witnessed the danger firsthand when, upon pulling lightly on a bookcase, several heavy items fell that could have injured a small child standing below them. On finding a child's dresser in another home, he explains, "You can see the sort of domino effect when this starts to tip. Everything else comes over, the child falls backward. You've got all kinds of physics working to pull this over on top of a child." Hazelton notes, however, that some parents are doing things right, such as bolting bookcases, keeping television sets low and against the walls, using blocks of wood to level furniture, and storing toys at low levels so children don't climb on drawers and shelves.