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4th of July a busy day for emergency rooms
'No firework is 100 percent safe'
July 3, 1997
Web posted at: 9:38 p.m. EDT (0138 GMT)From Correspondent Rhonda Rowland
ATLANTA (CNN) -- Health records indicate that there were 7,600 fireworks-related injuries reported last year in the United States, 40 percent of them to bystanders.
Which means that while the 4th of July is one of the noisiest days of the year in the United States, it is also one of the busiest for hospital emergency rooms.
CNN's Rhonda Rowland reports
2 min., 17 sec. VXtreme streaming video
A typical example is Johnna Eberle, who at 10 years old was blinded when she was hit in the eye with a bottle rocket.
"I believe it did shoot up," she says now, "but then, watching it, it just came back."
One of every five fireworks injuries are eye injuries. In fact, according to Dr. Harvey Cole, an oculoplastic surgeon in Atlanta, fireworks can be more dangerous to the eye than being hit by a baseball.
"The eye is protected by the bones around the eye" when a baseball approaches, he says. "When a firework comes in, you've got a missile coming in at speeds up to 200 miles an hour going directly into the eye."
Bottle rockets are the most dangerous and next, believe it or not, is the humble sparkler.
Sparklers get HOT
"A sparkler can heat up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit," he says. "That's hot enough to melt gold, so it certainly can melt the cornea, which is the front part of the eye."
"No firework is 100 percent safe," says Ann Brown of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. "The most dangerous are the illegal fireworks -- the M-80s, the M-100s, the cherry bombs, the salutes. The reason these are illegal is because they are highly explosive."
Dr. Cole says there are ways to minimize the possibility of harm if you feel that setting off a few explosives is your patriotic duty.
"A person should wear safety glasses at all times when they are using fireworks," he says. "And bystanders should stand at least 50 feet away from the fireworks if they're observing."
"You don't want to have an eye injury," says Johnna Eberle. "It's not something you can deal with and be done with. It's something that's going to effect you the rest of your life."
Related sites:
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- U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
- The National Council of Fireworks Safety, Inc.
- Preventor - 4th of July Safety
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