PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It's fireworks season, and that means as the explosions go up, so do the numbers of people being injured by them. Medical professionals are urging the public to exercise caution.
Dr. Nadia Haqqie, assistant director of the Wills Eye Hospital emergency room, said one of their largest concerns around this time of the year, is the amount of children they see coming in with eye injuries from fireworks.
"Obviously, we can't stop people from buying fireworks even though we wish that we could, but always under the supervision of an adult, especially for children," said Haqqie, adding at least half of the eye trauma they see caused by fireworks are in patients under 20 years old.
"You only get two eyes," she warned. "It's primarily with the young patients that are doing these things and to even just have a permanent scar on your eye that affects your vision in one eye would be just so earth-shattering."
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Haqqie urged people to keep in mind that fireworks are not toys and can cause serious injuries — including some that can't be recovered from.
"With these fireworks and sparkler-related injuries, you can get a corneal abrasion on your eye, which is basically a scratch of the surface skin layer of cells on your eye. Because these items are extremely hot, you can get a thermal burn on your eye which can cause permanent injury, permanent scarring and damage to your vision," she said.
"We had a patient last year unfortunately go completely blind from a very bad ruptured globe, trauma to the eye, firework-related, and it's just not worth it."
She recommended that anyone operating fireworks of any kind wear eye protection. An even safer option is to attend a public fireworks show and keep a safe distance.