School kids and heavy backpacks

The answer is B. Backpacks are causing serious injuries, but not the back problems that some health professionals feared.

A recent study published in the journal Pediatrics concluded that most injuries are caused by a child falling over a backpack, getting hit by another kid swinging a pack, or stabbing himself with a sharp object while rifling through a backback.

After studying hundreds of cases of backpack injuries, the researchers found that whopping 89 percent of back pack injuries were to parts of the body other than the back. Back injuries were less prevalent than injuries to the head, face, hands, wrist, elbow, shoulder, foot or ankle.

Study author Brent Wiersema, an orthopedist at Bi-County Community Hospital in Warren, Michigan, reported that advising kids to "put the backpacks in a safe place so they do not trip over them, and not to use them as a weapon to hit another person, could eliminate more than 40 percent of backpack injuries" that required a hospital emergency room visit.

Resources:

Read an abstract of the January 2003 article, "Acute Backpack Injuries in Children", at the Pediatrics Web site.