Spring mowing brings injury risks
By Kay Wilson Tribune-Herald staff writer
Mower safety
The Amputee Coalition of America offers the following mowing safety guidelines for children:
- Never allow children to play on a lawn mower, even if it is turned off.
- Never allow a child to ride on a riding lawn mower with you.
- Keep your children indoors and do not allow other children to play nearby while you are mowing.
Children should be at least 12 years old before operating any mower and at least 16 before being allowed to operate a riding mower.
In Alaska they celebrate spring by making bets on when the ice will melt and the rivers will begin to flow freely again. In Central Texas and most of the lower 48, the season could be opened by placing bets on when the first lawn is mowed.
By now, nearly everyone has been awakened too early on a Saturday morning by a lawn mower under their bedroom window.
The sounds of mowing are all around us from now until October but don’t become complacent just because it is a fact of life. More than 200,000 people were treated for mower injuries in 2007, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Most of those —160,000 people — were under 19 years old. About 75 people die every year in mowing accidents.
Joan Densman mows her lawn in Waco.
Jerry Larson/Tribune-Herald
Accidents during mowing are the most common cause for amputations for children under 10. More than 600 children a year become amputees because of lawn mower carelessness.
Dr. Tim Welter, associate medical director of the emergency room at Hillcrest Medical Center, has seen many mowing injuries in his ER tenure.
“Injuries happen in many ways,” he said, “but most often people reach under the mower with the rotors turning to clear the blades or inadvertently stick their foot under the deck and their hands and feet are mauled.”
There are many risks, the consumer product safety group says: Children getting run over or backed over by riding mowers; serious burns when people touch the hot muffler of a mower engine; runaway mowers when people are unfamiliar with the controls.
Welter prefers mowers with a safety feature that turns off the mower if you let go or step off the seat. Most accidents, he said, happen “when we don’t disconnect those rotors. Never fail to turn the engine off when we leave the mower and take the key.”
People dress inappropriately when mowing lawns — open-toed shoes and no goggles are a common mistake. Sticks and stones will indeed hurt your bones; things thrown by a mower cause many of each year’s injuries. Be sure to pick up toys, metal, glass, wire, string and sticks and stones before you begin mowing. And leave the jewelry on the dresser. It can get caught up on handles, throttles and moving parts.
kwilson@wacotrib.com
757-5701
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