>> [Elliot F. Kaye] Good morning, everybody.
And thank you to the media for coming out and covering this important annual safety event.
We have a new and dramatic demo to show you in a few minutes.
It's a demo of incidents that, unfortunately, lead to death.
The culture that we see with social media postings allows
for promoting riskier and riskier behavior.
But even with that, a consumer should know never to put one
of these mortar shells on his or her body.
And we're going to show you why with this very dramatic demonstration.
We recently released our new death and injury report which covers last year's period
and unfortunately, the injuries in particular which are around 12,000 are the highest
in 15 years and we're still seeing about a dozen deaths every year
and those numbers have to come down.
And I want to talk about, in particular, injuries to children.
I'm the father of two boys, they're young, they're energetic, I totally understand the fact
that this is a great and fun holiday and we want to share it with our kids.
But you have to keep fireworks away from children, especially sparklers.
And I know we all grew up holding them and carrying them around as kids and give them
to kids, but we have to end that practice.
Sparklers burn as hot as a blowtorch and if you're not going to give your kid a blowtorch
to run around with, and I hope you don't, please don't give them a sparkler.
It's the perfect example of something that we say to our kids,
see with your eyes, not with your hands.
So we're working this year to drive those numbers down and to drive all the injury numbers
down and the deaths, and we really need the public to pay attention to this messaging.
This year we have an extra special part of our messaging created by Jason Pierre Paul and I,
in response to the accident that he had last year with an M80.
Jason Pierre Paul, a professional football player for the New York Giants,
didn't even have the reflexes to get away from a professional grade firework.
And the key message that he and I had
from that public service announcement is leave professional fireworks to the professionals.
So I want to all, urge all of you who are covering this event to please disseminate
that public service announcement and for the public to listen
to Jason Pierre Paul's messaging, look at his hand, look what happened last year.
It can make a difference in saving lives and preventing injuries.
[ Fireworks ]