Video: Preventing bunk bed injuries

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With so many kids in bunk beds, injuries are bound to occur

Ask Reed Slinger's mom. He was 3 when he cut his head on a ceiling fan while jumping on the top bunk.

"At the time I was so upset that we could have let this happen that we took the bed down the very next day," Beth Slinger said.

Now a new study in the Journal Pediatrics has found an estimated 36,000 American kids go to the emergency room each year with bunk bed injuries.

"Bunk beds are a fun place to be for kids, especially when they're young," said Dr. Tony Woodward, Seattle Children's Hospital. "But they hurt themselves by falling out. They hurt themselves by jumping out. They hurt themselves by being pushed out."

Woodward, chief of emergency medicine, says there's even a so-called bunk bed fracture.

"It's a typical fracture that we see," he said. "It's at the front part of the first toe. And it's from landing from that 6 or 7 or 8 feet high."

But for kids under 6 the injuries are often worse. It's why experts say they shouldn't be in bunk beds at all.

"They often have head and neck injuries," Woodward said. "Those can be contusions, skull fractures, lacerations, because they have big heads compared to the rest of their body and they fall head first."

And bunk beds can entrap children. Lynn Starks lost her 3-year-old daughter Whitney 11 years ago. 

"I walked in and found my daughter hanging from the bunk bed I had put her in the night before," Starks said.

Lynn helped push through federal safety rules in 2000. But older bunk beds may still pose a risk.  

So check bunks for safety.

First, make sure the ladder is secure. Guard rails on all sides must be 5 inches above the mattress. Gaps should be no more than 3 and a half inches. The mattress should fit snugly. And check slats.

"Are the slats that hold up the mattress secured, so that they can't slip and that mattress fall down and hurt somebody else?" Woodward said.

Don't let things like ropes or bedding hang from a bunk due to risk of strangulation.

Parents should also check for bunk bed recalls.