Life Science log

Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com "Every 90 minutes, a child younger than 18 years of age is seen in a US emergency department for a battery-related problem." This is a statistic found in a report by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital which focus on issues related to pediatric death and disabilities. They found that the yearly number of battery-related emergency department visits among children under the age of 18 has more than doubled over 20 years. The report, recently published online and featured in the June 2012 print edition of Pediatrics, stated that there were 2,591 emergency department visits in 1990 and 5,525 emergency department visits in 2009. Researchers used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which is under the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The NEISS provides information regarding consumer product-related injuries as well as sports and recreation-related injuries that wer