The miniblind industry and consumer product regulatory agencies know that the number of children who accidentally hang themselves on the cords of blinds is extremely high. Over the past thirty years, over 340 children have been strangled to death on the pull cords, inner loops or back loops of blinds (like those found in Roman Shades). There is approximately one death a month from this type of accident.
The Consumer Product Safety Comission announced on December 15, 2009, a recall of 5.5 million blinds for repairs on all roll-up blinds and Roman shades.
I could give you a list of safety tips to help keep your child safe with corded blinds. Why chance the death of your child? My only safety tip is for everyone to throw out all corded safety blinds and never buy them again. If you are going to have blinds in your windows, only buy and own cordless blinds.
I do not usually include so many YouTube videos in one post, however, this topic is of utmost importance and each video helps to educate and understand the issue of window shade cording deaths. It is so easy for children to hang themselves. The first video is a mom filming her children at home. When she pans the camera around the room, she sees her three year old child beside the window, cord around his neck, hanging and blue…
Please be hypervigilant with the safety of your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and friend’s children. It only takes four minutes for a child to die while hanging on the cord of a blind.
For safety information on window cords, call the CPSC Hotline at 1-800-638-2772.
So sad—-but I don't believe in blinds—so I never have to worry about it….
happy sits saturday sharefest
I thought about it, so sad, one cannot leave a child alone.
Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest.
I heard about this on the news! It is so horrible.
That is so scary! I am so glad you put the information out there! Dropping by from SITS! Happy Saturday Sharefest!
Good Morning, thanks for visiting Bee Wise Bags and following! I added you as well! Great post, really helpful, as I have a bunch of little kids around here and some of them have red hair 🙂 Glad to find you as well!
Love your site. Came here from the link on my site from yesterday's giveaway contest.
I did see the news about the recall on all roman shades. Scary. Wish they would convert everything to wireless soon!
Happy holidays to you 🙂
thanks for sharing. I am now tying up strings. happy sits saturday
Wow. I did not realize so many children died this way. I'll make sure to get rid of all those blinds when I get own home. Thanks for the information!
Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest!
Oh my gosh- I'm taking my blinds down ASAP. They came with the house and I haven't gotten around to replacing them yet, because I didn't like their dustiness anyways… but yikes- I have to get on it!!
Came via SITS and I'm so glad I did!
It's extra difficult to stomach when a child dies in a preventable accident…unspeakable tragedy!
p.s. I have two awards for you to pick up on my blog:
http://marlieandmommy.blogspot.com/2009/12/thats-what-friends-are-for.html
Red, thanks SO much for bringing attention to this very important topic. Having worked in EMS and then continued working with pediatrics for many, many more years after that, I know all too well how devastating these accidents can be. I'm SO glad they have finally issued a widespread recall. I just hope parents will LISTEN and do what is necessary to get rid of these shades/blinds or at the very least get the kits to repair them. (I know some people special ordered very expensive blinds and/or shade and would rather not give them up if they can repair them.) I hope to do a post on this next week. Do you mind if I use these videos?
I hope you and your family have a very blessed Christmas!
Teresa <><
My kids looove to climb up the back of the couch and look out the windows – we try to keep them from doing it but as we all know – we can't be there every single minute-a person has to go potty from time to time-we do what we can to keep the strings tied up so they are unreachable –
one just never knows –
Now I'm very glad we don't have any of these! Was thinking about blinds, but we've decided to get shutters, anyway. Thanks for the informative post.
This is a problem near and dear to my heart, since the adopted child of one of my parents' dearest friends was killed this way. Because of that, my kids have endured my paranoia about such things since they were little, and now my grandkids hear it. So glad you're posting about this.