It's that time of the year.

All week I've been hearing explosions and short bursts of firecrackers in my usually quiet neighborhood. Every time, I cringe.

Practice makes perfect, I tell myself, in anticipation of the upcoming Fourth of July weekend.

But as a former cops reporter and editor, I've read, written or edited too many stories about kids hurt in fireworks accidents. Too many people wind up in hospital emergency rooms at this time of year with burns, damaged limbs or even a lost eye from mishandled pyrotechnics.

University Hospital and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center each handle five to 10 such injuries during the four weeks around the Fourth, their emergency room doctors say.

That's not a lot, compared to gunshot wounds or car wreck injuries, but it's enough to make doctors like Dr. Mike Gittleman at Children's angry.

Most of these injuries are to children ages 14 and younger, he says.

It's illegal to sell fireworks to anyone younger than 18, yet most kids treated had been unsupervised by adults when they were injured, he says.

"Usually what happens is kids are playing with fireworks, and it goes off in their hands or near their face," he says. "I've seen everything from amputations of digits to minor first-degree and second-degree burns."

Gittleman says a kid at Children's three years ago lost his eye and part of his hand. The year after, a child's finger had to be amputated.

Nationwide, some 8,800 fireworks-related injuries were treated in U.S. hospitals in 2001, down from 9,500 the year before.

Why do people allow their children, especially young ones, to handle fireworks by themselves?

Any other time, most people wouldn't give their kid a lighted match, cigarette or firearm. But for some reason, we're more lenient about missiles, Roman candles, bottle rockets and other fireworks.

Even sparklers can reach temperatures above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, says the American College of Emergency Room Physicians in a report released Monday.

That group and others representing doctors and fire marshals are calling for bans on all consumer fireworks.

Leave the pyrotechnics to professionals, they say, and close all consumer retail shops and roadside stands.

That's too extreme for this realist. I know Americans will just get their fireworks illegally if they can't get them legally.

Unlicensed dealers are more likely to sell to kids and to deal in unregulated, unsafe and much-too powerful fireworks, says William Weimer, vice president of a legitimate retailer, Youngstown, Ohio-based Fantom Fireworks.

It's the adults - not new laws - who can best reduce these injuries, he says.

"I don't believe these are child fireworks injuries. I believe these are stupid adult injuries."

Some tips: Don't let kids handle fireworks. Don't use alcohol with fireworks. Light one firework at a time. Use a long butane lighting device or a torch called a punk. Have water standing by.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395