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Claim: Household paper shredders can pose a danger to children and pets.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Origins: While Barbara and I were away from home for a few days recently, we received a playful In any case, the experience reminded us that we (like many other people) now have in our home a variety of machines that once were typically found only in business offices. Although some people manage to find ways to injure themselves with just about anything (even something as seemingly innocuous as a fax machine), paper shredders can pose an especial hazard In 2005, for example, the Spokesman Review reported:
[T]he U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says shredders — $350 million worth were sold [in 2004] and many wound up in homes
It isn't difficult to find harrowing reports of children being seriously injured through sticking their fingers into shredders, such as the following account from Consumer Reports:
The agency received 31 reports involving finger amputations and other finger injuries from paper shredders from January 2000 to December 2003.
Lisa Broadfoot's son, Talan, was helping her shred documents, when suddenly his little fingers got sucked in.
In March 2006, TV's Inside Edition reported a similar case of injury to a child:
"He screamed and then was begging me to get his hands out of this machine, 'Please Mommy, Please Mommy, get my hand out.' [He was] just screaming and crying and begging," Broadfoot said. Lisa rushed Talan to the hospital with the shredder still attached. "They started cutting the blades because there was no other way to get his fingers undone," she said. "It was like he could feel it. He just started screaming again and I'm holding him and trying to explain to him that it's going to be OK. It's going to be OK." Talan ended up losing three of his fingers.
When you meet Hallie Mouritsen, you cant tell that there's anything wrong with this beautiful five year-old girl. But if you look closer at Hallie's left hand, her fingers are cut off at the knuckle. The doctor described them as being "crushed, mutilated and non-viable."
Among household pets, dogs are particularly at risk from shredders, as they have a tendency to lick things, and many breeds have long, floppy ears that can get caught in shredder openers. The Spokesman Review published an account of an incident in which a puppy suffered injuries from a paper shredder so severe that she was euthanized afterwards (and her owner lost a portion of one finger trying to rescue her):
How did it happen? Hallie was feeding paper into a shredder in her home when her fingers got caught in its powerful blades. According to her father, Matt, "it grabbed her fingers and just began pulling." And Hallie's not the only one. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a safety alert after receiving Mr. Mouritsen is an accounting professor in Salt Lake City, Utah who often works at home. He says he had just opened the shredder for the first time and after using it, left the room briefly. Hallie, who was just two, went into the room with her older sister. "The next thing I know, while I'm making dinner, my five year-old is yelling, she's stuck, she's stuck!" he told Inside Edition's Investigative Reporter Matt Meagher. Hallie's wounds took months to heal. Her dad still chokes up remembering Hallie's reaction the day the bandages came off. "She went like this with her hand" (hiding his left hand). "She couldn't even look at it. She asks us to this day, when are my fingers going to grow back?"
Adam Forney doesn't even own a paper shredder.
Inside Edition offered a similar tale of a young dog's catching his tongue in a shredder:
And he probably never will. The 22-year-old was sitting on his couch in his south Spokane home watching television when his 7-month-old puppy licked the top of his roommate's shredder and the dog's tongue was sucked into the shredding mechanism. "I ran into the room ... she was pulling so hard and the thing was In the chaos of trying to help his injured dog, Forney's pinky finger was bitten off at the first joint, and another finger was fractured by the bite. "I grabbed her head to try and get her to calm down, and she bit me," Forney said. "She ran out of the room and I just lost it. It looked like a murder scene in my Forney went to the emergency room, and his mixed-breed dog, Alice Lane, went to a local pet emergency clinic, where she was euthanized.
A number of pets have also been injured by shredders.
A large part of the problem is that since shredders were originally designed as business equipment for offices (where they would presumably be
For one dog owner, it was a horrifying experience. Sandra Clarke of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina told us when she was at home working on 
used only by adults), many models did not have the kinds of safeguards built into them to provide adequate protection in household environments, where children and animals abound. Although consumer safety groups are working to get manufacturers and lawmakers to adopt more stringent safety standards for shredders (such as making paper slots thinner and placing blades farther away from openings), the adoption of new standards takes time, and plenty of the machines already have been purchased for home use.
Some veterinarians maintain that serious shredder accidents involving animals are rare, but the frequency of occurrence is difficult to estimate since there has not been any systematic effort to keep track of such injuries. Regardless, the subject merits attention since the potential for accidents (involving both people and pets) will likely continue to grow as more and more shredders make their way into households, and the likelihood of injury can be mostly eliminated by following a few simple precautions:
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