Almost 37,000 people did this on Thanksgiving in 2016, and the number is expecting to rise this year; what is it?
The answer: Went to the Emergency Room
Almost 37,000 people across the U.S. went to emergency rooms on Thanksgiving Day 2016, according to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, as preparing the holiday feast tends to come with a side of cuts and burns, while overindulging on rich foods and booze encourages falls, food poisoning, and car accidents. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission also estimates that an average of 1,800 cooking fires occurs on Thanksgiving Day each year — three times the number on any other day of the year. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that the number of cooking fires triples on Thanksgiving. “Thanksgiving is one of the busiest days of the year for all urgent care centers,” said Dr. Katharine Miao, medical director of the Metro-North region of CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey. “This is a year-over-year event. A lot of people are cooking things they don’t normally cook.
We see people using knives that haven’t been sharpened, utilizing immersion blenders and tolls they are not comfortable or familiar with and doing it hastily, so there’s a rush of cuts and burns and other types of injuries.”