Watch Out for Exploding Fitness Balls
By Sarah Rubenstein
“Hazard: An overinflated fitness ball can unexpectedly burst while in use, causing the user to fall to the floor.”
That’s what caught our attention in a news release out from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which said manufacturer EB Brands is voluntarily recalling fitness balls after receiving 47 reports of balls “unexpectedly bursting, including reports of a fracture, and multiple bruises.” Ouch.
Brian Anderson, president of the company’s fitness division, tells the Health Blog that the balls aren’t being pulled from the market and aren’t being manufactured differently going forward. (Turns out the word “recall” doesn’t always refer to pulling products off the market.) “The product is not faulty; it was not found to be defective,” Anderson says. He adds the 47 reports came over a period of several years in which it sold three million balls in the U.S.
But the company found that when the balls pop, the issue is over-inflation, Anderson says. Exercisers often balance themselves on the balls as they do sit-ups and the like. (Check out a slide show from the Mayo Clinic to get the idea.)
EB Brands says it’s warning consumers not to put too much air into them, and it’s adding a new sticker inside the product box and on the inflation pump to the same effect. It’s also revising its inflation instructions in the package, and it’s giving away measuring tape of lengths specific to the correct inflation sizes.
Burst Ball Bonus: Listen to this podcast in which tech maven Leo Laporte is startled when his own fitness ball bursts. That incident ended in laughter rather than fracture.
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