Hair Straighteners account foe 10% Burns among the youth in UK.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said at one hospital in Northern Ireland, one in 10 of children admitted with burns, had been injured by the beauty device with some needing plastic surgery.
Hair straighteners can reach scorching temperatures of 220C – hot enough to fry an egg. As they take 40 minutes to cool they remain dangerously hot for far longer than many parents realise.
Youngsters who grab or fall on them can suffer disfiguring injuries as their skin is up to 15 times thinner than adults.
Figures released by the Royal Belfast for Sick Children show that 17 children aged between three months and nine years attended A&E at the hospital in 2009-10 with hair straightener burns. The average age of the patient was just 18months. They represented nine per cent of the 187 children who attended with ‘thermal injuries’ during that year.
In June this year, the Frenchay Hospital in Bristol revealed is had treated 110 children for serious burns in the last five years.
Across the UK this would add up to hundreds of serious injuries every year, with thousands more receiving minor injuries.
Children are most likely to receive burns to their hands, however children have also sustained injuries to the head, arm and foot.
Nicola Vance, a mother from Belfast, revealed her 19-month old toddler was injured after falling onto her straighteners a year ago just after she had switched them off. Although she whisked him away, just a couple of seconds did serious damage.
She said: ‘Alfie has just learned to shuffle so he was moving along the bed, he caught himself in the sheets and just fell forward onto the straighteners.
‘The middle of his eyebrows was all red and his skin had melted. If the straighteners had been any hotter, they would have peeled off his forehead.
‘Alfie was lucky that he didn’t lose his eyes, although he has been scarred for life.’
Now RoSPA are working with the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust on a ‘Too Hot to Handle Campaign’ to raise awareness of the risks.
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