TVs in the house dangerous to kids?

The 37-inch television sits in the dirt of the backyard, wet from the rain and dented and cracked from the fury of Alejandro Peña. His hands are swollen and the knuckles scabbed after he attacked the set as if it were a blood enemy.

In a way, it is. On Wednesday, the television fell on his 3-year-old daughter, Lizzette, after she tried to climb it to retrieve a toy. The set split her skull, Peña said.

In the past year, at Memorial Hermann Hospital alone, there have been 11 injuries from falling televisions. In the past four months, five of those have resulted in death. The extent of the problem at other Houston-area hospitals could not be determined at press time.

The previous incident occurred July 6, when 2-year-old Diego Martinez knocked a large television set onto himself and was pinned beneath it for several minutes. He died later that day.

There are no national numbers for fatalities, but in 2005, U.S. emergency-room doctors treated 2,600 children younger than 5 injured by falling televisions, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

"It's become a real public health issue," said Dr. Stephen Fletcher, chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital. "Who would have thought?"

Experts say the problem, already the subject of at least three academic studies, is really more about inadequate anchoring of TVs than it is about their design or size. Faulting a lack of parental awareness and an absence of fundamental prevention steps, they stressed the problem is easily avoidable.

Because many new televisions tend to be front-heavy, accidents tend to happen when small children climb them or try to retrieve objects on them. Experts said the most important thing is to keep TVs out of reach of small children or at least anchor them against a wall, and don't put things on them.

One of the studies called for manufacturers to make available or include an inexpensive furniture-securing device, such as a strap, and to add labels warning of the potential danger of units toppling. Full article here.