Reducing glass injuries in Britain

23rd November 2012

 

BAPRAS members, ophthalmologists and maxillofacial surgeons will be all to familiar with the morbidity and challenges associated with glass injury, particularly as a result of fights, assaults and accidents in urban centres. According to the authoritative British Crime Survey, there are about 43,000 violent incidents involving the use of glasses and bottles as weapons annually, only about half of which come to police attention. The annual cost of this violence is enormous, £71million according to a 2008 calculation, which includes the cost of lost output by the young adults who are mostly affected, as well as court, prison and medical costs. This takes no account of course of the costs of many more accidental injuries. In the opinion of treating doctors, most glass injury affecting the face, the case with most violence, results in noticeable or very noticeable deformity a year later. All this is largely preventable. 

A key to prevention is altering the properties of glasses and bottles to reduce the chances of breakage. A randomised trial showed that pint beer glasses which had been toughened during manufacture were associated with far fewer breakages and injuries compared with non toughened glasses. The emergence of alternatives, such as (almost unbreakable) polycarbonate glasses, and multi layer plastic bottles, provides opportunities to apply this principle much more widely and effectively. 

Successive governments have tried to tackle this problem by giving local authorities more powers and by encouraging the industry to sell alcohol in safer glasses and bottles. But they have stopped short of giving local councils the power to apply glass bans to specific areas of city centres where injury is most likely, preferring instead to focus effort only on particular premises. This does not go far enough. 

Another way to prevent glass injury is to introduce glass buy back schemes. These apply in many European countries. In Finland and Germany for instance, glassware has a recycle value and this provides a powerful incentive to keep the streets clear of glass. Here, the glass industry, by law, has to fund glass recycling. A comparison found that whereas in Cardiff in 2004 there were more than 100 "glassings", in Helsinki, the number was near zero. 

This provides all plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgeons with solutions to this problem. To find out more about how you can get involved with this campaign, visit www.vrg.cf.ac.uk and follow @violencesociety on Twitter. 

Jonathan Shepherd
Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Cardiff University, Chairmant of the Cardiff Partnership Violence Prevention Group

 

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