Hot Liquids Burn Like Fire
Fire Safety Education
Protect Your Baby From Scalds - Scalds Caused 80% of All Burns to Children Under Five.
Hot Beverages
- Put the coffee down when you hold the baby. A wiggling baby can jiggle your arm and spill the drink all over himself/herself.
- Put drinks and soups toward the center of the table away from curious fingers. Babies like to grab things.
- Consider replacing tablecloths with place mats to prevent your child from pulling everything on the table onto herself.
- Hot beverages caused one-half of the burns to children under five.
- Three-quarters of the people burned by hot beverages were under five.
Tap Water
- It takes only one second for water at 155 Degrees (F) to cause a third degree burn.
- Set your hot water heater to temperatures of 125 Degrees (F) or less. (Massachusetts law states that the temperature must be between 110 Degrees (F) and 130 Degrees (F).
- Test the bath water before you put the baby in it. The temperature of how water can vary.
- Always supervise young children in the bath. Babies and toddlers like playing with knobs and levers. They may turn on the hot water then you turn your back.
- 55% of the tap water scald patients were under three years old.
Cooking
- Turn pot handles inward.
- Establish and enforce a NO zone around the stove. Do not let children play near the stove or barbecue. This protects children from cooking liquids, grease and the hot metal.
- One-fifth of the people burned by hot cooking liquids were under five.
- Statistics were obtained from the 2003 Annual Report of the Massachusetts Burn Injury Reporting System.