|
|
|
Window safety guards for children
can prevent the next 40,000injuries.
|
- CHERRY HILL
AUGUST 15, 2005
One of my offices is in Mount Holly, across from a building that
includes two second-story apartments. Each apartment has one
or more young children. Imagine my surprise one afternoon
in June 2005, when a young child, perhaps five years old, decided
to “take a stroll.” I called out my window for the child to
get inside. He ignored me.
Picture
© fLeon Roomberg 2005
I called the police who arrived in
less than ten minutes. By that time, the
child had grown bored of the adventure and returned indoors. In this instance the mother was home, but in
another room. Even so, one misstep would
have resulted in death.
There is rarely a shortage of such
falls in the news. I wonder about the
luck of the 2½-year-old fell from a two-story window Sunday, May 15th,
2005. As reported by The Enquirer of
Cincinnati (news.enquirer.com), the
child was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical
Center. Hospital officials declined to release the
baby's condition.
Two weeks prior, on June 3, 2005,
Hernando Today (www.hernandotoday.com)
reported that a 2-year-old boy from Springhill, Florida, was airlifted to Tampa General
Hospital
early the prior Friday afternoon when he fell from the second story window of
an apartment building.
Two days prior, on June 1st, 2005,
the New York Times (www.nytimes.com) reported
that a 2-year-old Bronx boy fell from his family's fourth-floor living-room
window, plummeting more than 25 feet to a corrugated metal awning.
The above examples show the
problem can occur anywhere in our country.
According to the U.S. Consumer
Product Safety Commission (CPSC), [http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml00/00126.html,]
there were 120 window-fall related deaths to children between 1990 and
2000. In that same time period, 40,000 children
were treated in hospital emergency rooms for window fall-related injuries. The
number of children who live but are permanently disabled as a result
of these falls has not been published. Surely
40,000 injuries to children is enough to warrant our attention.
In the year 2000, the CPSC
recommended a solution for this problem in the form of child-protecting window
guards. (Window guards screw into the
side of a window frame and have bars no more than 4 inches apart. They are sold
in different sizes for various size windows and adjust for width. Guards must
meet requirements for spacing and strength and those that allow for escape in
case of emergencies must be difficult for very young children to open. Window guards are sold at hardware stores such
as Home Depot, and Lowes, and are priced between $10 and $30.) According to the CSPC, consumers and
landlords can also purchase these devices directly from the manufacturers which
include John Sterling Corporation (800) 367-5726, LL Building Products (800)
755-9392, and Automatic Specialties (800) 445-2370.
Our government agencies have
already studied the problem and defined the solution. Here we are, five years later, and there is
still no national regulation requiring parents and landlords to install window
guards in homes with small children. We don’t even have public service
announcements to educate people and draw their attention to the problem!
While safety regulations are
ultimately a local issue, county, state, and federal authorities have many
tools at their disposal to encourage attention and resources deal with many
safety issues. Surely there is one such
tool that meets your personal standards and requirements.
Only by committing to bring
attention and resources to the problem will we reduce the juvenile body
count.
|
The proposed “Atkin's
Act:
*
1. Within twelve
months of recording a birth, the government office recording that birth must send
a letter (or take any other cost-effective step to notify) the parents of the
child informing them of the risks of not installing child-safe window guards,
and information about where they can purchase window guards. The same letter should inform them that if they
are renting within a multi-family building, that their landlord is required to
install such devices. In addition, oversized windows require a "limiting"
bar so that the window opens no more than four inches
beyond a child-safety guard.
Local governments
shall be authorized to contract this service out and/or join with other
localities as they see fit to control expenses.
Local governments may also choose to add other information to the
mailings such as the existence of other child-safety products for the
home. Local governments may, at their
option, set fees for accepting and including advertising pieces from manufacturers and/or
sellers of child safety equipment to include in the notification mailing. This option may become a means of enhancing
public safety while increasing revenues, for so long as the offer is extended
equally and no manufacturer or retailer is favored over any other.
2. Local (and
state) governments should modify their zoning requirements to require
installation of child-safe window guards in any residence occupied by children
under the age of twelve. The penalty for
failure-to-comply and any requirements for inspection may be left up to local
authorities or may be standardized on a state or federal level.
3. From the time
a federal law is passed, states should have twenty-four months to certify their
local governments have conformed to these requirements. This time delay is to enable states and
localities to determine the most cost-effective ways in which to comply with
this regulation. Any locality that does
not have any residential structures of two or more stories will be exempt from
this requirement.
4. Local governments
shall charge either fire or police or other public department with
responsibility for follow-up validation that such bars have been installed
within one year of the child’s birth.
Such validation might be as simple as a drive-by observation that includes
a digital photograph. The original
notification letter may request the parents photograph the windows guarded from
the outside of the house and mail or email the photograph to the appropriate
authority. In that case, drive-by
validations may be limited only to parents who do not send in a photograph.
5. Just as with
other federal mandates, certain types of federal funding should be held in
abeyance if the deadline has passed without state conformity.
6. The federal
law should require that each state re-certify itself every seventh year in
order to insure the letters are up-to-date and still being mailed.
7. Funding. While the preferred funding of the
notification program would be through general revenue sources, we are not
opposed to a $2.00 registration fee to be levied at the local birth registrar
level. This would fund maintenance of
letter text, printing, envelopes, and postage.
8.
Exemptions. Any locality that does not
provide housing for children (such as certain military bases and prisons) or
that does not contain any multi-story residential housing (such as many rural
areas) is exempt from this law. Any room
within a building constructed with windows that are constructed not to open or
which are constructed with windows that do not open more than 4 inches, or
where a window opens onto a same-level child-safe deck or similar play area
shall be exempt from this regulation.
9. Other uses.
On a local level, this communication path may be expanded to serve
additional child-safety purposes.
Examples of such additional use might be (but are not limited to)
information about improving child safety in the home by installing smoke
detectors or child-safe guards for electrical outlets, to improving child
safety by purchasing infant seats for the family automobile. However, new uses of the communications path
are prohibited if they detract from the effectiveness of the original intent of
improving window safety or if funding for additional communications is not
procured on the local level.
.
|
[* Named
after Zaire Atkins age five, who fell to his death from a a 15 story
window on August 5th, 2005.]
This letter is being sent both to
multiple public figures, to news organizations, and will be posted on our web
site, www.RoombergInstitute.org For our contribution, we promise to use the web site to recognize the replies of any
public figure who send us a letter of endorsement, and also to update major newspapers and other news sources. If you endorse our position, please email
that endorsement to the address below.
The Roomberg Institute is a
project of AAADC, a not-for-profit organization whose projects are educational,
and bi-partisan.
If you would like to contribute to
resolving this nationwide issue, please contact us at the mail and email
addresses below.
Sincerely,
Leon J
Roomberg
Leon J. Roomberg, M.S.,C.
(Counseling)
Director
The Roomberg Institute
www.RoombergInstitute.org
16 E. Cedar Ave.
Marlton, NJ 08053
609.238.4625
Disclosure: As of the date of this
writing (Wednesday, July 06, 2005,) we had no financial interest of any kind in
any business in any way related to this issue.
Any donations or other funding received for this project from any person
identifying themselves as having such an interest will be disclosed prominently
on our website. We will solicit
sponsorship
from ethical people and businesses interested in advocating this position on a
non-partisan basis.
get
involved!
|