I was the editor on this segment for Need to Know on PBS.
Producer: Jackie Pou
Every year some 10,000 children end up in emergency rooms because of serious choking incidents, many of them involving hot dogs. And that’s only the number of cases reported. And while there is oversight of toys that pose a choking risk, when it comes to something that is actually supposed to go in a kid’s mouth, parents are pretty much on their own. The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement asking the government to do more, but as it turns out, it took an inventor — a businessman — to come up with an ingenious solution.