A child can get badly burned in the blink of an eye. Now we're learning how big the problem is and which kids get hurt most often.
Lilly McKinney loves cooking in the kitchen. But one day she was seriously burned. It happened in an instant.
"My husband was checking the lasagna that was in the oven, and she snuck right around him and just put her hands right on the oven door," said Danette McKinney, Lilly's mother.
Lilly had second-degree burns on both hands. She spent a night in the hospital and weeks in bandages.
A new study showed that in the Unites States nearly 121,000 kids are treated in the ER each year with burns. Even that is down by almost a third over the 17 years data was collected.
Who's getting hurt the most? The majority were children under six, injured most often at home.
Dr. Tony Woodward, division chief of emergency medicine at Seattle Children's, has seen the cases, from electrical, to chemical, to scalds.
"They have scald burns from either pulling hot water off the stove, from the microwave opening with something hot in it, or pulling the table cloth off and getting some hot water," he said. "It starts on their face, on their hands as well. And often the significant ones are down their chests."
He says to prevent burns, get on your hands and knees.
"Get down there. Look up at the table. Look at the stove. Look at the things that, if you were a toddler, and they looked exciting to you, you might touch and end up with a burn," Woodward said.
You can protect your child another way.
"I've never seen anybody who has choked on an electrical outlet cover," Woodward said. "But I've seen lots of kids who have stuck fingers and keys into outlets."
He says keep a close eye on kids outdoors too.
"They may go up and touch a grill that we're all standing around cooking with," he said. "They may go up to the motorcycle or the lawnmower and touch the exhaust pipe, not realizing that it's hot."
Experts say one of the best ways to prevent scalding burns is to keep your hot water heater's thermostat at 120 degrees or lower.
