Suburban Lawn Warriors Should Exercise Caution

By Salynn Boyles
WebMD Medical News


March 30, 2001 -- Oil up the lawnmower and start planting those pansies. After months of indoor exile, it's time to get back in the yard. But be careful out there because the pursuit of a killer lawn could be ... well, maybe not deadly, but dangerous.


More than 60,000 children and adults end up in hospital emergency rooms each year due to lawnmower accidents, according to figures from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. These injuries are often serious, with one-quarter of hand and foot traumas resulting in amputations.


And dangers may be lurking in places of which you never thought. A study published in the February issue of Pediatric Emergency Care suggests that those metal lawn edgings used to separate grass from flowerbeds pose a big threat to kids. Between January 1995 and October 1997, 126 children in Denver were treated at area hospitals for lacerations caused by stepping or falling on the landscape edgings.


The vast majority of the injuries (89%) -- mostly cuts to the feet or knees -- were serious enough to require suturing. And one of the injured children was hospitalized. The authors conclude that metal lawn edgings pose a serious risk to suburban children, and they advise against using them.


The typical lawn or garden is filled with many other potential hazards. These include electric garden tools, which should not be used in wet or damp conditions; pool chemicals, some of which can spontaneously combust if contaminated; and pesticides and other chemicals. Approximately 2 million people and countless household pets are affected each year by common household pesticides.


"All kinds of dangerous chemicals are available to the public, but few people ever read the warnings on the bottles to learn how to protect themselves," Mark Bates of Bates Garden Center in Nashville, Tenn., tells WebMD. "Chemicals used in gardening can do a lot of damage to the eyes and lungs. Protective goggles are important, and you need a good filtered mask. A painter's mask won't really protect against noxious fumes."


Many gardening injuries occur when people who have been sedentary all winter overdo it, National Safety Council consultant Alton Thygerson, MD, tells WebMD.


"A good friend of mine reached down to pull a weed and ended up having to have a back operation," says Thygerson, a professor of health sciences at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City. "Back and other muscle strains are common, and they can be serious."


The backyard grill poses another, often ignored, suburban hazard. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a threat when charcoal grills are used in poorly ventilated areas, and burns are common with both gas and charcoal grills.


"One awful injury that I may see once or twice a summer occurs when people take hot charcoal and dump it on the ground, and then barefoot kids run over it," Darien, Ill., pediatrician Garry Gardner, MD, tells WebMD. "These are often second- and third-degree burns. It's such an obvious danger once it happens to you, but not many people think about it ahead of time." Gardner serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics National Committee on Injury and Poison Prevention.


But lawnmower mishaps account for by far the largest number of serious injuries occurring in America's backyards each spring and summer. The best way to protect against such an injury, experts say, is to follow a few simple rules.


The American Academy of Pediatrics says children 12 and under should not be allowed to operate a walk-behind mower, and they should be at least 14 before using riding mowers. Adults should never take children joy riding on a riding mower, and children should not even be in the yard when a mower is in use. Don't mow the lawn when the ground is wet or damp.


Everyone should wear proper clothing while operating a mower or other powered gardening tools. That includes protective eyewear and sturdy shoes -- no sandals or sneakers. And never use hands or feet to remove grass or debris from mower blades or free a jammed blade. Instead, use a stick or broom handle to do the job.


And if an amputation injury does occur, never assume that a severed body part is too small to reattach, Thygerson says.


"It is important to retrieve the amputated body part and get to a hospital quickly," he says. "Even if it is just the tip of a finger or toe, lay people should not be trying to decide what can and can't be reattached. That is for a doctor to decide."