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Most of It Happens on the Way Out

There is one genuinely surprising number in the research on bathrooms, and it changes where you would put a grab bar.

Quick answer

CDC counted 234,094 bathroom injuries in a year among people aged 15 and over. 37.3 percent happened while bathing or getting out of the tub, and only 2.2 percent happened getting in. The risk is concentrated at the exit rather than the entry.

Source: CDC, MMWR: Nonfatal Bathroom Injuries Among Persons Aged ≥15 Years, United States, 2008.

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The asymmetry

37.3% vs 2.2%Share of bathroom injuries that happened while bathing, showering or getting out of the tub or shower, against the share that happened getting in. CDC, 2008 data.

Getting in is a deliberate, braced movement with a dry foot on a dry floor. Getting out is the same movement reversed, wet, often one-handed, frequently with nothing to hold that was designed to be held.

Almost everything people do to make a bathroom safer should therefore be aimed at the exit rather than the entry.

Source: CDC, MMWR: Nonfatal Bathroom Injuries Among Persons Aged ≥15 Years, United States, 2008.

The scale of it

CDC estimated 234,094 nonfatal bathroom injuries among people aged 15 and over treated in US emergency departments — a rate of 96.4 per 100,000 — and 68.3% of them happened in the bathtub or shower.

That is 2008 data, published in 2011, and it is the most specific national study of its kind. We state the year because it matters.

And it is not evenly distributed by age

Age	Bathroom injuries per 100,000
15–24	58.8
85 and over	515.3

Nearly nine times the rate. CDC also found that 13.7% of all bathroom injuries led to hospital admission rather than treatment and release, and admission rose steeply with age.

Which is the real argument for changing a bathroom before it is needed rather than after something happens in it.

What that implies for the fixture

A tub you step over is a threshold to cross at the moment you are wettest and least stable. That is the case for a conversion, and it is a stronger case than the one usually made for it, which is about fashion.

If the tub stays, where a handhold goes is the next question, and there is a published dimensional standard to refer to even though it does not apply to houses.

Changing a tub is mostly about what is behind it.Tell us what you want done and we will route you to a contractor in your area, found from your ZIP code, who can look at the wall and the floor before quoting. No charge to you, and we will not ask you why. Anything else needing a plumber is fine to bring up while we have you.

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