Government Teaches About Fireworks Safety Online

Speaking of practical ways that the government can provide useful information to citizens online… there are various government webpages that help citizens become informed on being safe around fireworks. Here’s a sampling of them…

“According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) annual death and injury report (PDF, 325 Kb) on fireworks, approximately 40 percent of fireworks injuries occur to children younger than 15 years of age. In addition, CPSC received reports of three fatalities related to fireworks in 2010″ (source).

Who is at Most Risk?

In 2010, U.S. hospital emergency rooms treated an estimated 8,600 people for fireworks-related injuries. 73 percent of these injuries occurred between June 18 – July 18. Of these:

• 65 percent were to males and 35 percent were to females.
• Children under 15 years old accounted for 40 percent of the estimated injuries.
• Children and young adults under 20 years old had 53 percent of the estimated injuries.
• An estimated 900 injuries were associated with firecrackers. Of these, an estimated 30 percent were associated with small firecrackers, 17 percent with illegal firecrackers, and 53 percent where the type of firecracker was not specified.
• An estimated 1,200 injuries were associated with sparklers and 400 with bottle rockets.
• The parts of the body most often injured were hands and fingers (30 percent), legs (22 percent), eyes (21 percent), and head, face, and ears (16 percent).
• More than half of the injuries were burns. Burns were the most common injury to all parts of the body except the eyes, where contusions, lacerations, and foreign bodies in the eye occurred more frequently.
• Most patients were treated at the emergency department and then released. An estimated 7 percent of patients were treated and transferred to another hospital or admitted to the hospital. (source)

Fireworks Fire Safety Tips

• Sparklers are not toys. They can reach 2,000^o Fahrenheit–hot enough to melt some metals.
• Leave pieces of fireworks on the ground after an event. Some may still be ignited and can explode.
• Stand several feet away from the professionals lighting fireworks; fireworks have been known to backfire or shoot off in the wrong direction. (source)

Here are some more tips from the Consumer Product Safety Commission…

And OSHA has this safety information for the fireworks industry…

A similar version of this was originally posted at the IT company that I work for’s product blog (Disclosure: the product deals w/ transparency, gov’t, & technology and our company works with government in multiple ways to help them with gov 2.0 and related technologies)