A safe bath is both supervised and slip-proof.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—When it comes to bath time, parents of young children often worry about their kids getting burned by hot tap water, or slipping underwater. But a new study looking at injury data found that slips and falls are more common bathroom threats, with more than 43,000 of these injuries reported every year. This type of accident happens so quickly parents usually can’t react fast enough to stop it. That’s why prevention is the best way to tackle the problem.

THE DETAILS: Researchers used data from the National Electronic Surveillance System of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1990 to 2007, uncovering nearly 800,000 bathtub and shower-related injuries involving children age 18 and younger who were treated for injuries at an ER. Roughly 80 percent of the injuries were from trips, slips, or falls. Young children were particularly at risk, with more than half of the injuries occurring in kids 4 years old or younger. Children in this age group tended to topple forward, and were more likely to cut their faces in falls, the study found. “Unfortunately, adult supervision isn’t enough to prevent these injuries; they happen so quickly that a parent simply can’t react quickly enough to prevent them,” says Gary Smith, MD, of Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. The study will be published in the August edition of the journal Pediatrics.

WHAT IT MEANS: Sometimes, just getting your kid to take a bath is hard enough; you don’t need to add to the difficulty with worry about a bath time fall. The key to making sure slips and falls don’t happen involves making sure your bath or shower floor isn’t as slippery as a slip-and-slide. Here’s how to make bath time safer for you and your kids.