Electric Socket Covers
At Kinderpods we are passionate about child safety in the products we sell and use in our own homes, so we thought that you might be interested in a website we discovered a couple of days ago.
The information we found on this website has resulted in us stopping selling a product and also resulted in us removing all of this particular item from our home.
And what's this thing that has prompted such dramatic action, it’s a well known home “safety” product sold by some of the biggest shops in the land, the simple mains electrical socket cover, you know the thing, it fits into a mains electric socket and covers up the holes.
But… and it’s a big but, there’s no need to use these items because child safety was designed into the UK mains socket over 60 years ago, and the design is still as safe today as it was then.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the covers were simply useless, we wouldn’t have sold them anyway because that doesn’t fit in with our practical products ethos. The main thing is that a product supposedly aimed at increasing home safety has been proven to increase the danger of electrocution, not reduce it!
One of the main safety points about a standard UK mains socket is that the “live” connections have shutters which spring closed when the plug is removed. The only way to open the shutters is to push something small enough and strong enough into the earth connection. This means that a child (or anyone else for that matter) must first find something that can be pushed into the earth connection and then, whilst the spring loaded shutters are open, push something else in to the live connections. To us this seems like a complex, two handed job not easily achievable by young children.
However, if they already have something readily to hand that can be pushed into the earth connection and will stay in there, thus opening the shutters, then it becomes a simple, one handed task to push something else into the live connection. By the way, the holes in the socket are designed so that not even a newborn can get their fingers in!
Socket covers are designed to fit into the earth connection and so provide a child with an easy to insert object which will open the “live” shutters.
If a child removes the socket cover (this is easier than you might think, children are very resourceful!) and inserts the cover upside down in the socket, then the live connections are left exposed!!
Take a look at the picture below to see what we mean (we don’t recommend trying this at home – it’s dangerous!!).
In this article we have just tried to raise awareness of the issue - there’s been considerable research into this topic and the website www.fatallyflawed.org.uk (opens in a new tab) goes into a lot more detail – all we ask is that you visit the fatallyflawed website and then make up your own mind about socket covers.
To see our range of practical safety products, just visit our baby safety products section.
The information we found on this website has resulted in us stopping selling a product and also resulted in us removing all of this particular item from our home.
And what's this thing that has prompted such dramatic action, it’s a well known home “safety” product sold by some of the biggest shops in the land, the simple mains electrical socket cover, you know the thing, it fits into a mains electric socket and covers up the holes.
But… and it’s a big but, there’s no need to use these items because child safety was designed into the UK mains socket over 60 years ago, and the design is still as safe today as it was then.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the covers were simply useless, we wouldn’t have sold them anyway because that doesn’t fit in with our practical products ethos. The main thing is that a product supposedly aimed at increasing home safety has been proven to increase the danger of electrocution, not reduce it!
One of the main safety points about a standard UK mains socket is that the “live” connections have shutters which spring closed when the plug is removed. The only way to open the shutters is to push something small enough and strong enough into the earth connection. This means that a child (or anyone else for that matter) must first find something that can be pushed into the earth connection and then, whilst the spring loaded shutters are open, push something else in to the live connections. To us this seems like a complex, two handed job not easily achievable by young children.
However, if they already have something readily to hand that can be pushed into the earth connection and will stay in there, thus opening the shutters, then it becomes a simple, one handed task to push something else into the live connection. By the way, the holes in the socket are designed so that not even a newborn can get their fingers in!
Socket covers are designed to fit into the earth connection and so provide a child with an easy to insert object which will open the “live” shutters.
If a child removes the socket cover (this is easier than you might think, children are very resourceful!) and inserts the cover upside down in the socket, then the live connections are left exposed!!
Take a look at the picture below to see what we mean (we don’t recommend trying this at home – it’s dangerous!!).
In this article we have just tried to raise awareness of the issue - there’s been considerable research into this topic and the website www.fatallyflawed.org.uk (opens in a new tab) goes into a lot more detail – all we ask is that you visit the fatallyflawed website and then make up your own mind about socket covers.
To see our range of practical safety products, just visit our baby safety products section.
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