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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Doctor sees rise in cart mishaps


Jesse Wirth, front, 22 months, sits with his  5-year-old brother J.J.  in a race car shopping cart while shopping with their mother at a Spokane Fred Meyer store Wednesday. Five Spokane-area children in a two-week period in August were injured badly enough in cart accidents to go to a hospital. 
 (Holly Pickett / The Spokesman-Review)

Five children in two weeks have been hurt in shopping cart accidents serious enough to send them to a Spokane emergency room, a doctor said.

And parents like Cherie Read know why.

“It’s just really my youngest son,” the Spokane mother of two said Wednesday at a local Fred Meyer store. “He stands up.”

Even tightening the seat belt doesn’t help, Read said as she settled Jesse Wirth, a wiggly 22-month-old, and J.J. Wirth, his 5-year-old brother, into a shopping cart shaped like a blue race car.

“Even with it buckled tight, he can still stand up,” said Read, a stay-at-home mom.

Grocery shopping with two little kids? “It’s a challenge,” she said.

In the first two weeks of August, local children injured in shopping cart accidents included a 4-month-old whose seat slipped through the broken bars of a cart and a 6-year-old who tipped the metal trolley on top of her, said Dr. Sandra W. Horning, medical director of the pediatric emergency department at Sacred Heart Medical Center children’s hospital.

“I think someone needs to look into it,” Horning said. “We see a lot of instances where they flip over.”

Most of the children suffered cuts and concussions, none serious, Horning said.

“The mother of the 4-month-old, she was in worse shape than the baby,” she said.

But Horning said the spate of accidents, which occurred at stores throughout the region, was surprising. The emergency room usually treats about five cart-related accidents a month, she said.

The incidents underscored the findings of a recent Pediatrics journal study, which reported that more than 24,000 children – most younger than 5 – were hurt in shopping cart accidents last year.

About 75 percent of the kids who showed up in the nation’s emergency rooms suffered head and neck injuries in the cart accidents, including more than 90 percent of children younger than 1, according to the study published this month in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Only about 4 percent of the kids hurt required admission to the hospital, but nearly half of those were for fractures.

About 60 percent of kids were injured in falls from carts, and more than a quarter were injured when the carts tipped over, the study said.

It’s easy to do, said Cherie Read. She suffered a scare recently when she was trying to hold Jesse with one hand while helping J.J. get out of a cart.

“I tried to get him to get out, and the cart fell over,” she said.

A man had to help his mom pick it up, J.J. recalled.

The American Academy of Pediatrics called for several measures to reduce cart injuries, including stricter standards for U.S. cart construction and better ways to keep parents from using shopping carts at all. More businesses could offer in-store child care, pickup areas or parking lot assistance to help parents of young kids.

A spokeswoman for Washington region Safeway stores offered another solution:

Parents could keep an eye on their kids.

“Kids get hurt because they’re unattended,” said Cherie Myers, director of public and government affairs for Safeway. “It isn’t the cart. It isn’t the kids. It’s the parents.”

Grocery stores are among many retailers who offer carts for their customers, she noted. Nearly all of the businesses post warnings in the area where carts are corralled and on the carts themselves.

Still, responsibility for the children’s safety is the adults’ job. Parents of injured kids agree.

Lisa Johnson’s daughter, Elizabeth, is 11 now, but the North Idaho mom still winces at the memory of the shopping cart accident when the girl was a toddler.

Elizabeth was standing in the back of a shopping cart at a Fred Meyer store, when she reached out for a tempting book on a shelf.

“She wiggled – and then she fell out. She landed right on her forehead,” recalled Johnson, 42. “It was the most sickening sound I ever heard.”

Store officials rushed to help the 2-year-old, who was not seriously hurt. Now Johnson keeps a keen eye on her 6-year-old son, Andy.

“He isn’t allowed to hang on the side. He’s not allowed to ride in the back,” Johnson said.

Johnson feels remorse a decade later, and Spokane mother Nancy Parker’s chagrin is almost 30 years old.

“We’re warned to be careful,” said Parker, 63, noting that two of her three boys, now grown, were hurt in shopping cart accidents.

One son cut his back on a glass case after taking a nosedive out of a cart. A second boy pinched his scrotum when he was improperly positioned on the metal bars of a cart seat, injuring himself seriously enough to require surgery.

“The youngest one, I had to shop with one hand on him. He was a terror,” Parker recalled. “They weren’t bad kids; they were just boys.”

Monitoring her children was her duty, said Parker. Parents like Read agreed. But they also asked shopping cart manufacturers for a little help.

“I wish they would figure out something different with the belt,” she said, “so the kids can’t stand up.”