NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHILD ALONE

June 3, 2009
I went to a press conference today at Primary Children's Medical Center for a new child safety campaign they launched called "Never Leave Your Child Alone" to help parents understand how dangerous it is to leave your kid in or around a car alone, even for a few minutes. Every year there are tragedies where a kid dies because they've been left in a hot car or been backed over and killed. I remember one last summer where a baby was left in the car and died which we had to cover in the news. While the numbers are small in comparison to other things, these deaths are completely preventable. I'll try to keep my health education and Violence and Injury Prevention Program shpill to a minimum but seriously, after today's press conference, I will NEVER, EVER leave my kid alone in a car!!! Not only is it dangerous because someone could steal your car with your kid in it (happened a few months ago in Salt Lake City), or that your kid could knock the car out of park or strangle themselves in a window, but the intense heat inside a car, even on a cloudy day would blow your mind.

As part of the press conference, they set up a thermometer to measure how hot the inside of a car got in the few minutes we were at the event. It was 80 degrees outside and over 155 degrees and still rising inside the car! When we opened the doors to "cool things down" (like so many of us might do with the windows, which does very little to lower the temperature inside a car by the way), the temperatures skyrocketed from 120 degrees to over 150 degrees in less than two minutes. It's seriously enough that you could bake cookies or fry an egg inside. I was shocked as I watched the temperature get higher and higher... and this is part of my job to help send messages to the public about how dangerous this is! You are literally frying your kid to death. As an ER doctor who spoke at the event put it, it's like sticking your child in the oven and it only takes minutes, not hours, to boil their brain and organs. I've never heard anyone describe so graphically what actually happens to their tiny bodies. I can't imagine how horrible it must be to be helplessly strapped in a car seat literally boiling to death as your body goes from sweating (which by the way, kids' bodies can't regulate temperatures like adults so they can't sweat efficiently), then gets clammy, and finally in a last ditch effort to cool down seizures followed by brain death. Sadly, I think it just might take this graphic description to get some people to change their behaviors.

Now I'm sure after reading this, you're thinking that you would never do that but I'm sure more of us have in the past left our kids in the car to run back inside for something we forgot or for that quick run into the store. What is more precious than a child? You'd never dream of leaving $1 million dollars (heck, let's get serious, probably $100) on the back seat of your car so why on earth would you leave a priceless child there while you ran into the store for what you anticipate to only be minutes? It's all too common to hear concerns from parents about waking their kid up or having to re-buckle them in their car seats rather than concern that they are putting their child's life in danger by leaving them alone in the car. A firefighter who spoke said when they get calls about kids being alone in cars, most parents are more upset that they had to bash in a window to pull their limp and lifeless kid out of the car than they are for the health of their child.

Take a few minutes to watch these public safety announcements on Primary Children's Medical Center website about this new campaign. The website also has some prevention tips, statistics, and materials you can download and share. Please, please, please NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHILD ALONE and share this message with other parents. It could very well save the life of a child.