Parents are being warned over the dangers of letting children play with garden hose pipes during a heat wave after a nine-month-old boy suffered second-degree burns.
Looking for ways to get kids to cool down (opens in new tab) during the heatwave can be tricky – they’ve had an ice cream (opens in new tab), and other tasty cooling snacks (opens in new tab), but getting out the hose pipe might seem like a good idea but in hot weather there is an increased risk of the water coming through the pipe being at a scalding temperature.
And in the hope of raising awareness as another heatwave hits the UK this week, Stacey, who runs Daisy First Aid Redhill & Croydon has re-shared a photo of the painful-looking injuries on Facebook (opens in new tab) the consequences of playing with a hose pipe in a bid to alert other families of the dangers.
The post reads, “Please please read this and take note…4 years ago this baby suffered partial thickness burns over 30% of his body from being accidentally sprayed with a garden hose and firefighters have issued a fresh warning recently.”
Las Vegas fire department warned, ‘’A garden hose exposed to direct sunlight during summer can heat the water inside the hose (not flowing) to 130-140 degrees Fahrenheit (54-60 degrees C ) which can cause burns especially to children & animals.
“Let the water flow a few minutes to cool before spraying on people or animals.”
Stacey added, “It’s not something people would immediately think of but with the unusually hot weather lately, it’s worth sharing.”
The boy pictured is Nicholas Woodger from Arizona, who was sitting in his paddling pool when the tragedy happened.
When the boys mother, Dominique, sprayed her boy with the water, she was horrified that it was a stream of boiling liquid and he suffered second-degree burns to 30 per cent of his body – although he was not permanently scarred.
At the time Dominique told ABC15 Arizona, “I thought he was crying because he was mad, because he hates when he gets sprayed in the face. I didn’t think that it was burning him.
“Just be careful. Just touch it before you spray, before you let your kids near it.”
And other parents have thanked her for sharing the warning, one wrote, “I would never have thought of this so thank u xxx”
Another parent put, “Not something I would of thought of and my grandson was playing with the hose today not spraying on himself thankfully . I will def remember now though. Thanks so much.”
And a third parent revealed she too had experienced something similar, she added, “What an important point to make. I turned our hose on the other day to fill my 16-mth daughter’s pool. Luckily I had hold of the end as the water that came out burned me quite badly.took me a minute to realise it was because the hose had sat in the sun all day. Thank goodness it was my hands though and not bubbas.”
