With at least 4 million baby walkers still in homes and more than one million sold each year, the Alabama Department of Public Health advises parents to exchange their mobile walkers for safer stationary alternatives. Nearly 20,000 children wind up in emergency rooms each year with baby walker-related injuries. Many of these injuries are serious including concussions, broken bones and broken teeth.
Most injuries occur when children fall down stairs.
Although new voluntary safety standards for walkers have been issued to help prevent falls, they do not remove all the risks. Due to their increased mobility, small children in walkers are also at risk for pulling down containers of hot liquid, food or heavy appliances, ingesting poisonous substances, suffocating and drowning. Parents think their child is safe in a walker, so long as they are close by. In more than half of all baby walker injuries, parents or caregivers were in the same room with the child when the injury occurred. Another argument can be made against baby walkers.