Parents Are Urged To Ban Trampolines

Decrying an “epidemic” of broken legs, shattered arms and banged-up heads, a top medical journal is calling for a far-reaching ban on trampolines and urging parents to banish them from their back yards.

A study appearing in the March edition of the journal Pediatrics reports that trampolines were responsible for nearly 250,000 visits to U.S. hospital emergency rooms by children from 1990 through 1995.

That prompted the recommendation by the journal, the nation’s premier magazine of pediatric medicine, that trampolines should not be sold for private recreational use.

“Trampolines were designed to be gymnastic training devices - they were never designed to be used as a backyard toy,” said the study’s author, Dr. Gary A. Smith, director of emergency medicine at Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.