SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 4

53rd legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - second session, 2018

INTRODUCED BY

Mimi Stewart

A JOINT MEMORIAL

ENCOURAGING SCHOOLS AND PARENTS TO RECOGNIZE AND REDUCE THE HEALTH RISKS TO CHILDREN FROM CARRYING OVERWEIGHT BACKPACKS.

     WHEREAS, overweight backpacks carried in schools are causing increasing problems of back pain and spinal strain for students across the nation; and

     WHEREAS, because spinal ligaments and muscles are not fully developed until after age sixteen, overweight backpacks are a source of repeated low-level stress that may result in chronic neck, shoulder or back pain in children; and

     WHEREAS, according to the United States consumer product safety commission, more than seven thousand emergency room visits each year are due to backpack-related injuries, and in 2010 alone, physicians' offices and clinics and hospital emergency rooms treated nearly twenty-eight thousand strains, sprains, dislocations and fractures from backpacks; and

     WHEREAS, studies have shown heavy loads carried on the back have the potential to damage the soft tissues of the shoulder, causing microstructural damage to the nerves and damage to internal organs; and

     WHEREAS, the global burden of disease study of 2010 showed back pain as the number-one cause of disability worldwide and musculoskeletal disorders as the second-highest cause; and

     WHEREAS, children's textbooks are often heavier now than in the past, and in addition to textbooks, students often carry computers, cell phones, water bottles, running shoes, band instruments and other equipment considered essential to have readily available; and

     WHEREAS, more than ninety percent of students carry backpacks, which in studies have been found to weigh as much as twenty-five percent of the child's body weight; and

     WHEREAS, backpacks are often not worn correctly, for example, slung over one shoulder or allowed to hang significantly below the waistline, increasing the weight on the shoulders and making the child lean forward when walking or stoop forward when standing to compensate for the weight;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that school administrators, teachers, parents and students be educated about the potential health impact of heavy backpacks and be requested to take proactive measures to avoid injury; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that schools be requested to work with their respective parent-teacher associations to assess the extent to which students use overweight backpacks and to promote innovative homework strategies that lessen the need to take school materials and books home each day; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that schools be requested to consider that backpacks should weigh no more than a maximum of ten percent of a child's body weight, have individualized compartments to efficiently hold books and equipment and have wide, padded and adjustable straps to fit the child's body; that children should wear both shoulder straps and not sling the backpack over one shoulder; and that the heaviest books should be left at school; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that schools be requested to consider moving toward e-textbooks as federal and state funding become available; use handouts or workbooks for homework assignments; and consider integrated education about backpacks by using a hanging scale in the classroom that allows students to weigh backpacks and enter the results into a graph that tracks the backpack weight and that students and schools review the data to determine what can be done to lighten loads; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the director and chair of the legislative education study committee, the chair of the legislative health and human services committee and the secretary of public education for distribution to parent-teacher associations, local superintendents and charter school head administrators.

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