About as many as 60 million selling disposable body warmers a year for shoes and socks.
The popularity of the body warmer for shoes is high. It is because the point of a foot that tends to be cold is heated.
However, the Tokyo Metropolitan Comprehensive Consumer Center warned the consumers as "There is a possibility of causing a heavy thermal burn depending on the usage".
The center seriously caught a lot of complaints concerning the burn accident of the body warmer for shoes.
Then, the center executed the product test that had bought eight body warmer commodities for shoes sold in the drugstore and the supermarket, and measured the temperature of the skin when using it and the temperature of the body warmer.
As a result, to warm the foot in shoes, it was confirmed that it was effective.
On the other hand, the center ascertained danger of causing the thermal burn by the temperature of the body warmer rising to 80 degrees or more when the consumers did not keep directions.
The body warmer for shoes is a product used only in shoes. There are a lot of consumerses that maintain the state stuck on socks after shoes are taken off, too.
The temperature of the body warmer rose to 86 degrees when the center conducted the experiment that assumed such a situation.
In the thermometry of the skin, when rising to 46 degrees, the center judged that test continuance any more was dangerous, and discontinued measuring.
Additionally, the center measured the temperature of the body warmer for shoes based on the standard of usual "Disposable body warmer" that warmed the hand and the body.
As a result, the maximum temperature of some commodities reached 80 degrees exceeding 70 degrees that were the maximum temperatures of the disposable body warmer provided for by JIS standard.
Why do you generate heat by the high temperature by the body warmer for shoes compared with a usual disposable body warmer that warms the hand and the waist?
The center said, "The body warmer for shoes is manufactured aiming at use in shoes with a little oxygen. Therefore, the thermacogenesis by the oxidation reaction is promoted compared with use in shoes when using it in a usual environment".
However, the consumers to know such information is few.
Therefore, there are a lot of people who use for the body just like a usual disposable body warmer and owe the thermal burn.
An especially serious accident is a low temperature thermal burn over the thermal burn case with the body warmer for shoes.
In the complaint case that consumerses had sent to The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan (NCAC), there was serious following accident information.
When I went out, I put a disposable body warmer for shoes on the tiptoe of the both feet with socks had been swept. I came home about 30 minutes later. Afterwards, I spent 4 hours and about 30 minutes in the house.
I received the diagnosis and treatment in the hospital because I had found the tiptoe the bubble. As for the right foot ring finger that had owed the low temperature thermal burn then, about 5milli was excised. The skin was transplanted from the femoral region. I could not help being hospitalized for as many as two months.
The thermal burn progresses to the deep part of the skin so that the low temperature thermal burn may give the influence of the fever heat to the human body for a long time.
And, it causes a serious accident more than the face.
It is necessary to watch out also for the body warmer stuck on the body for a long time especially , considering getting a high temperature depending on the usage.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Comprehensive Consumer Center warns, "The body warmer for shoes is a commodity different from the body warmer put on the waist. Because there is a possibility of owing the burn when using it by the purposes other than shoes, it is necessary to keep directions and to use it".
The center requested strengthening the burn prevention measures such as doing a comprehensible display from the industry at the same time.
Some body warmers had not described the caution mark among eight brands to which the product test was executed.