A team of researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital has published a new report in Pediatrics that tallies the number of deaths and injuries due to window-shade cords over a 26-year period.

The results are alarming: In those years, 271 children, or about one child per month, died from strangulation by window cords. This number likely underestimates the true danger, says Dr. Gary Smith, an emergency-room physician and one of the study's co-authors, as the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database doesn't record injuries and deaths to children who are treated in a non-emergency room setting or who didn't receive medical care at all.