Every month nearly one child dies and another one is injured from window coverings, cords, and some of these victims are in military families. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has designated window coverings with exposed cords to be one of the top five hidden hazards in homes with young children. Strangulation deaths and near strangulations can occur anywhere a window covering has a cord. Children can wrap the cords around their necks or become entangled in the loops of tangled cords. These tragic incidents happen quickly and silently- and they are preventable.
At the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Department of Defense, we care deeply about the safety of children in military homes. We are sure you do as well. The risk to military families is significant because a large percentage of families have children less than six years of age (37.4 per cent)--the same age that most strangulation deaths occur. In addition, because military parents are deployed months at a time, supervision becomes more challenging.
To minimize the risk associated with corded window coverings, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Department of Defense strongly encourage you to replace old window coverings with cordless options or window coverings with inaccessible cords, as well as take time to educate your residents about the risk of strangulation with exposed cords. To help further educate your residents, attached are: a window covering safety alert, a child proofmg checklist, and a listing of seven hidden hazards in the home. We suggest that you conspicuously display, the safety alert for at least 120 days and distribute the child proofmg and hidden hazards checklists to all of your residents.
In the past, many consumers have obtained free retrofit kits from the Window Covering Safety Council (WCSC) for blinds made before November 2000. However, you should be aware that these retrofit kits do not address the dangling pull cord hazard associated with many common window blinds. Thank you for joining with us in the prevention of child strangulation by window covering cords.
