While household appliances have made life immeasurably easier over the past few decades, it turns out that they’re also to blame for thousands of emergency room visits.
A study conducted by online loan marketplace LendingTree between 2013 and 2022 found that household appliances were responsible for 150,000 injuries in 2022 alone. They also found that the biggest culprit was, of all things, refrigerators.
According to the findings, over the course of the 10-year study, the group with the most injuries from household appliances was children aged four and younger. People in their fifties came in second. And overall, 427,454 people reported fridge-related injuries.
If you’re wondering how refrigerators have acted as such agents of chaos, it mostly has to do with fridges that are malfunctioning, resulting in water around the base. Many of the injuries were the direct result of slips and falls, not only while using the refrigerators, but also due to puddles and spills that accumulated around them.
Refrigerators weren’t the only appliances responsible for household injuries. Ranges and ovens led to 325,737 trips to the emergency room. These injuries, unsurprisingly, came in the form of burns and scalds. The next three most dangerous appliances, in order, were vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and microwave ovens. Dishwashers, clothes dryers, freezers, electric irons, and specifically electric ranges finished out the top 10.
The good news is that all these appliances are getting safer. Total household appliance injuries fell by 10% between 2013 and 2022. While there was a spike in 2017—which is when the most injuries were reported—a steady decline has followed. However, the study proposes that the pandemic most likely played a role in the decline since people were probably less likely to go to the hospital even if they were injured.
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