Could a child really be trapped in a refrigerator? Can't the door be opened from the inside?

As a person from Northeast China, I know by heart how many steps it takes to put an elephant into a refrigerator, but when I grow up, I often have this question: Can't the elephant push the door open from the inside? Until recently, I saw this question from a netizen:

Netizens' questions丨Webpage screenshots

I began to doubt my life. After all, I never got into a refrigerator when I was a child. Could it be that there are different settings on the refrigerator door that allow different degrees of force to be opened on both sides? With this question, I began to look for the answer in the history of refrigerators.

Currently, refrigerator doors can be opened from the inside.

The doors of the refrigerators we use now are closed by magnets. Just a little effort will open the door. If you slowly move the refrigerator door closer to the door frame, you will find that when the two are very close, the door will automatically be sucked over and closed. However, some older refrigerators are not magnetic, but mechanical.

Old refrigerator with latch | Wikipedia

For ease of use, some old-style refrigerator doors use a latch structure, as shown in the animated picture below. There is a slope on the outside of the special-shaped iron sheet, which makes it easy for the iron column to slide in, but difficult to get out.

Latch structure | Youtube

Therefore, if a child accidentally gets into this kind of refrigerator and closes the door, it can be said that it is impossible to open the refrigerator from the inside unless someone lifts the special-shaped iron sheet from the outside.

After the latch was widely used, there were also tragic incidents of children locking themselves in refrigerators and freezing to death or suffocating. After that, the United States passed the Refrigerator Safety Act in 1956, which abolished the latch device for safety reasons and replaced it with a magnetic door, and stipulated that all refrigerators must be able to be opened from the inside.

Studies show that after the implementation of the law, the number of children aged 0 to 9 who suffocated to death in refrigerators or freezers in California, USA, dropped from more than 1 per million to less than 0.5 per million between 1960 and 1981.

Between 1960 and 1981, the number of children aged 0 to 9 who died of suffocation in refrigerators or freezers in California, USA, decreased.

After the promotion of magnetic door refrigerators, the refrigerator production standards of various countries also have requirements for the maximum force that the magnetic door can be opened. For example, in my country, the force for opening the freezer and refrigerator cannot be greater than 53N.

GB/T 36608.1-2018

The pushing force of a 3-year-old child is around 70N, and that of a 4-year-old child can reach around 100N, which is about twice the standard. Therefore, even if one locks himself inside, he can push it open relatively easily.

The pushing force of children aged 3 to 7 years old, 1RM represents the maximum kilogram value that can be pushed.

Sometimes accidents happen, so be careful.

The best way to deal with old refrigerators with latches is to remove the latches and place them out of reach of children. But even so, in foreign countries, such old refrigerators are occasionally abandoned outdoors, which is not only a great hiding place for children to play hide-and-seek, but also a grave of despair. This happened even two or three years ago.

www.ibtimes.com 2019.6.13

In addition to mechanical design reasons, similar tragedies may also be related to psychological factors. The child may have entered the refrigerator out of curiosity. The refrigerator is cool and comfortable in the summer. The child may even sleep in it, which may cause the body function to gradually decline due to lack of oxygen and hypothermia. This slow process is the most fatal. By the time the child reacts, he may no longer have the strength to escape.

In addition, if the doors of some large freezers are not closed tightly, moisture from the outside may freeze in the gaps, and even some adults will find it difficult to open the door. In this case, it is best to turn off the power and let the ice in the door gaps melt on its own. If you are in a hurry, you can even use a heat gun to accelerate the melting. If a child is unfortunately trapped alone in this situation, it is still dangerous.

Therefore, although modern refrigerators do not have mechanical structures that can trap children, they may still enter the refrigerator by mistake out of curiosity and lack of common sense, thus threatening their lives and health. Parents and friends should still tell children the dangers of doing so and pay more attention to their children to avoid similar misfortunes.

References

1.Freezer, Dryer, Cooler and Refrigerator Entrapment Deaths to Children

2. GB/T 36608.1-2018 Technical requirements and evaluation of ergonomics for household appliances Part 1: Refrigerators

3.JESS F. KRAUS. Effectiveness of Measures to Prevent Unintentional Deaths of Infants and Children from Suffocation and Strangulation. Public Health Reports. March-April 1985, Vol. 100

4.Andrew C. Fry, Carol C. Irwin, Justin X. Nicoll, et al. Muscular Strength and Power in 3- to 7-Year-Old Children. Pediatric Exercise Science, 2015, 27, 345-354

Author: Little Cow

Editor: Li Xiaoqiu

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