Fireworks to avoid during July 4th

And then they hold this. And so there's a lot of people that have lost their fingers from this exploding in the tube while they're holding it. So you never want to do that. We're here today in the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, where obviously we do a lot of helmet safety, but we also do a lot of other safety in terms of eye injuries and facial protection, all the way from nerf toys to fireworks. Fireworks are a lot of fun. People love them, but they are very dangerous. Every year at the 4th of July, we see about 10,000 injuries. About 2000 of those are eye injuries. Here at Virginia Tech and the Helmet Lab, we've done a lot of research in blast injuries. Now, this all started about protecting soldiers. So we're working with the Army and the Department of Defense to protect soldiers from blast injuries and facial injuries. We did a lot of testing of what goggles work the best for projectiles, for blast, and we were able to dramatically reduce what they were seeing in the field. Then we applied that to consumer fireworks. If you look at bottle rockets, for example, we prove that it's not the blast, it's not the explosion. It's the kinetic energy. So the bottle rocket goes at someone, it hits them in their eye, and that causes the eye injury. That's really important when you talk about state rules. In Virginia, we have very restrictive firework rules. Even though they're sold at Kroger, you have to be over 18, and there's no projectiles. So they're just fountains or things like that. That really eliminates and reduces the number of eye injuries that we see in Virginia. Other states don't, and they allow any kind of projectile, bottle rockets or mortar rounds. They have much higher rates of eye injuries. So there's several different types of fireworks. In Virginia, where there's no projectiles, we have things like this, like the taco Tuesday. So it's just a fountain. There's no projectiles coming out. You can still get burned, so you can still get injured, but you don't have the risk of eye injuries. In other states, you can have what are called mortar rounds that you load into these kind of tubes. These come out, explode in the sky. They're very pretty, but a lot of risk with these. One of the biggest problems is people put them in upside down, and then they hold this. And so there's a lot of people that have lost their fingers from this exploding in the tube while they're holding it. So you never want to do that. Think about having a designated driver. Have a designated fireworks person, especially if you're going to use the mortar rounds or the bigger things, because alcohol and fireworks don't mix, and that's where most of the problems come from. I also advise people to be very careful around kids and fireworks. You know, most parents won't let their kids light the candles on their cake. Yet around July 4th, we hand them a bag of fireworks and we let them go play with those. So just be very, very careful and mindful of how you're using them. I'm Stephen Duma. I'm a professor of Engineering here at Virginia Tech. This is Fireworks Safety Explain