Despite repeated recommendations to cook on the back burners of the stove and to turn pot handles toward the back, many parents still fail to recognize their child’s potential risk for burns and scalds, new study findings suggest.

During a six-year period, more than 17,000 burns to children aged 5 years and younger were treated in emergency departments across the United States, and half occurred when children pulled a pot down from an elevated surface such as a stove or somehow spilled a pot’s contents onto themselves.

“Although the hazards of motor vehicles, poisons, and small parts seem to be well understood by parents, there seems to be no comparable understanding of the potential for kitchen burns and scalds,” writes study author Dorothy A. Drago, a Massachusetts-based product safety consultant.

“I’d like to see parents become as aware of the danger of hot liquid as they seem to be about, say, the danger of small parts,” Drago told Reuters Health.

Drago investigated the ways in which young children suffer household burns and scalds in an analysis of 1997 to 2002 data collected by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Of the estimated 17,237 burns treated in the emergency department during that time, nearly 66 percent were scalds resulting from hot liquids, and 34 percent were thermal burns from contact with some hot surface.

One-year-old children were the most likely to experience both types of injuries, scalds in particular - and were more likely to be hospitalized for a scald. Further, scalds were about five times more common among this age group than among younger children and almost twice as likely as among 2-year-olds, Drago reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

One-year-olds also comprised at least 44 percent or more of those who were scalded when they pulled a pot from some elevated surface or when they spilled the contents of a pot onto themselves - the two most common methods of scald injury. These youngsters were also likely to be scalded after putting their hands in a pot.

“The high frequency of scalds among 1-year-olds can be related to their inherent nature to explore their environment,” Drago writes.

Studies conducted in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States suggest that 2-year-olds are able to grip objects placed about 41 to 42 inches off the ground. Since stoves typically measure 36 inches from the ground, pots on the front burner are often within reach of 1 and 2 year-old children, the report indicates.

“It is not unusual for parents to fail to recognize what their children are developmentally capable of,” Drago said. “Toddlers are constantly learning new skills, and they are highly motivated to explore and imitate.”

Five-year-olds, on the other hand, were most likely to be scalded when they collided with a pot or with someone holding a pot, the report indicates.

Since 1977, various teams of researchers have recommended strategies to help parents reduce their child’s risk of scalds. Yet several studies have shown that such strategies - including turning pot handles toward the wall, placing hot beverages in the middle of tables, rather than within a toddler’s reach, and removing tablecloths from tables - have been ineffective. Parents do not always put such recommendations into practice, the report indicates.

“Because the frequency of kitchen scalds has not been reduced, we need to change our intervention approach,” Drago said.

“For example, it is not sufficient to tell parents to turn pot handles towards the rear,” she explained. “We need to teach them that the front burners are within reach of young children, so the back burners should be used when possible.”

An ideal solution, Drago added, “would be to keep toddlers out of the kitchen, but that is not always practical.” When such restriction is impractical, children should be placed in a high chair or otherwise confined while in the kitchen, she said, “but the high chair should be placed well away from the stove, counters, and table where hot items might be located.”

Parents and caregivers “need to recognize that hot liquids, and especially hot water, even in small amounts, can cause severe scald injury,” Drago said.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, January 2005.