Many new parents cover electrical outlets, install latches on cabinet doors and take dozens of other precautions to childproof their homes. But many overlook the potentially fatal hazard posed by glass tables, as well as the risks the tables create even for older children.

In December, an 11-year-old Rhode Island girl died after she suffered a severe puncture wound to her leg when she jumped on and fell into a glass coffee table in her family’s apartment.

A newly released report by researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston found glass-table injuries are more common than parents may think. About 20,000 people nationwide are treated in emergency rooms for injuries sustained from glass furniture each year. Most of the victims are children, and an average of three die from their injuries, it notes.

Glass tables turn potentially deadly when children jump on them, sit on them or knock them over. The accidents shatter the glass, which can cause lacerations, scars and damage to nerves and tendons. The injuries can turn critical in moments from severe blood loss.

Certain glass bottles, doors and windshields-but not tables-are mandated to contain tempered glass, which is four to five times stronger than standard glass and breaks into uniform, harmless fragments. Many glass tables are still manufactured using standard annealed glass, which breaks into large shards that can cause severe injury.

“Huge shards of glass are basically like knives. If they sever an artery, they can cause uncontrolled bleeding and the injury can be fatal,” said Amir Kimia, a physician at Children’s Hospital Boston’s Division of Emergency Medicine. Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, has been unsuccessfully pushing for laws that mandate safety glass in tables for several years, collaborated with Kimia on a the recent study on glass-table lacerations. The study appears in the March issue of Pediatric Emergency Care.

Using a computer algorithm to search electronic records, Kimia and colleagues identified 174 injuries logged by the Emergency Department between 1995 and 2007. On reviewing the patients’ charts, he concluded that half of the injuries would have been preventable or less severe with safety glass. Almost two-thirds of patients were boys, and the median age was 3.4 years. Cuts were most often on the face, especially in young children, followed by feet, legs, hands and arms. Forty percent of patients needed imaging to find buried pieces of glass, and 80 percent needed surgical repair.

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