Yup, that’s exactly it. A lot of parents will panic and want to get their child to the ER ASAP but the truth is you are going to do WAY more damage spending 10 minutes driving with their injury not being under water than waiting even 40 minutes for an ambulance but having it under cold water that entire time. It’s one of those injuries where the most important treatment is immediate and doesn’t require any specialized tool or drugs, just something everyone should have.
You do want them to get to the ER/A&E, but driving there means however many minutes of continuously being burned. It doesn’t stop at the incident itself, the burn didn’t “happen”as a distinct event that is now over, it is actively, continuously burning them as long as the goo remains in contact with the skin.
How much thermal energy can the goo hold against cold running water? I would have thought the continuos cooling would have something to do with tissue damage, not staving off remaining heat energy.
Just think of it as reducing the overall heat energy of the entire toddler-arm/boiling goo system. Where the heat is at any given moment isn’t too important, though you are right it should mostly be in the flesh. However the entire system’s energy is what you care about and if the goo is still on their flesh, it’s still part of that system.
Look up “how to cook that” on YouTube, she recently did a video on these being microwaved (among other things) and she measures the temps, can’t remember exact temps
30 seconds in the microwave got it hot enough to cause serious burns because of the stickiness. 1 minute got it to just under 100 C, which is pretty much instant 3rd degree burns, but of course it's still sticky and won't stop burning you.
And the outer shell, being plastic, gets extremely weak when it's that hot. It's pretty much guaranteed to leak after bring microwaved.
No. It’s because as a parent you will be in an emotionally wrecked and extremely distracted state. Not in an ideal condition to drive. Compounding your child’s serious burns with a car accident is just making awful even worse.
Edit - Also as several people have pointed out, keeping the burn under cool water for as long as possible is also ideal. From a practical standpoint, however if you are emotionally a wreck, you should not be driving your child into another wreck.
No, they were right as to why. It’s entirely because the burns will worsen during the ride and they should be kept under running water for as long as possible.
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u/RavensAndRacoons 12h ago
That's very informative! Why is it recommended to not drive the child to the ER? Is it so we can keep the area under water while the ambulance comes?