When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, many homeowners took the sudden downtime to break out the tool belt and do those DIY projects they’d been putting off for ages—often with disastrous consequences. A recent analysis of emergency-room visits in 2020 found that injuries related to home-improvement projects accounted for a staggering 3 percent of all cases seen by medics. The findings from insurance-ratings platform Clearsurance, based on data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, show that ER visits due to DIY disasters reached its highest rate in a decade in 2020, with the pinnacle coming in April at 4.09 percent of ER visits. The total number of home-improvement-related injuries in 2019 was higher, but the percentage of visits was lower, which researchers speculate may be explained by accident victims avoiding the ER during the pandemic. Some 290,000 home-improvement injuries led to ER visits in 2020, and 24,000 of those required a stay in hospital, according to the study. Among the most common injuries were broken bones, cuts and bruises, with hands and eyes being the most frequently damaged body parts.
