Child Found Hanging in Cords on Window Blinds

wallcovering tips

    Since 1991, the CPSC has received reports of 130 strangulations involving cords on window blinds. Of that number, 114 strangulations involve the outer pull cords, and 16 involve the inner cords that hold the blind slats. The strangulation victims ranged in age from 9 months to 17 months. All the deaths involved children in cribs placed next to windows.

    Since 1995, the CPSC has worked with the Window Covering Safety Council to redesign new window blinds to eliminate the outer loop on the end of pull cords, and provide free repair kits so consumers could fix their existing blinds. Window blinds sold since 1995 no longer have pull cords ending in loops.

    A review of window blind deaths started last year, and the CPSC found that children could also become entangled in the inner cords that are used to raise and lower the slats of blinds. According to the CPSC, "These entrapments occur when a young child pulls on an inner cord and it forms a loop that the child can hang in. In most cases, the outer pull cords were placed out of reach, but the children strangles when they pulled on the inner cords of the blinds."

    Tips for Parents

    Keep window covering cords and chains permanently out of the reach of children. All of the deaths involved children in cribs placed next to a window.

    Never knot or tie the cords together because this creates a new loop in which a child could become entangled.

    The child's grandmother, Caprice Harris, tells Eyewitness News that she and her daughter found the toddler just before 8:00 last night. He died shortly afterwards at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. "We had opened the blind because it was warm, in doing so, the string was pulled down long enough for him to get hold of."