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The Dangers of Celebrating Christmas: Injuries from Christmas Trees, Electrical Lights, Sleds and Chimneys
Romy Lauche, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the University of Technology Sydney, told Journalist's Resource that the most surprising finding was that almost everybody injured was white. A small fraction of injuries involved individuals who were black, Asian or indigenous. The research team did not look at injuries among Hispanics.
"We were really surprised to find such dramatic ethnic differences, and we feel that there is a public health issue that needs further research," Lauche said in an e-mail interview.
Lauche said she does not assume that the lower injury numbers among other racial groups — for example, black families — mean they are less likely to use holiday decorations or suffer Christmas-related injuries.
"So what happens with the injured Black children, if they don't show up in the ER? Does that have implications for their health and safety? This is just one potential issue," she told Journalist's Resource.
For the study, Lauche and her team examined data that had been collected through the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), a national sample of hospitals with around-the-clock emergency services. Each injury record includes detailed information, including the date of the incident, any consumer products involved, patient demographics, diagnoses and a narrative description of the incident.
With that data, the researchers were able to generate estimates for injuries treated nationwide over the 10-year period.
Lauche said she believes this is the first published paper to analyze Christmas-related injuries. She and her colleagues had hoped it would appear in the British Medical Journal's special Christmas issue, which features funny and obscure research findings. When the prestigious journal did not accept it, Lauche said they submitted the study to another journal without changing its "entertaining" tone.
Here are some other big takeaways:
Over the 10-year period, 2,839 injuries were connected to Christmas tree stands and supports while 10,492 were from chimneys. Christmas presents caused or contributed to another 2,305 injuries, although the authors did not explain which kinds of presents posed the greatest hazard.
Injuries were most common in children, adults aged 30 to 60 years and adults aged 70 or older.
"There was a clear gender difference in the type of injuries experienced with injuries related to electrical Christmas decorations being more common in males and injuries related to non-electrical Christmas decorations being more common in females."
The authors suggest holiday cheer may be partly to blame for the injuries. "The exuberance those with high levels of Christmas spirit (and potentially high levels of ingested spirits) possess may lead them to become overconfident in their abilities to perform physical tasks or practice potentially dangerous activities safely. Overconfidence is a known risk factor for injuries in motor vehicle accidents and workplace accidents, and as such is likely to also be a factor in Christmas-related injuries."
*Denise-Marie Ordway is the Managing Editor, Journalist's Resource, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
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