Bungee schoolbag 'may reduce backache'

Concerned parents over their children carrying heavy schoolbags may find the "bungee schoolbag" a welcoming invention. The innovative backpack reduces weight force by 86 per cent, which could lead to a drop in backache in children.

The backpack, which uses rubber bands to allow people to carry 25 per cent more weight while expending the same amount of energy, is the brainchild of American scientist Larry Rome, a biology lecturer at Pennsylvania University.

Dr Rome said the new invention could be an immediate application for backpacks carried by schoolchildren, which he described as "a well-known cause of musculo-skeletal injury".

The scientist explained that a person carrying 27 kg in a bungee backpack would use the same amount of energy as someone carrying a load of 21 kg in an ordinary one.

In Britain, a County Down pressure group which is campaigning for legislative change on the issue of children's schoolbags, welcomed the invention. British Safety At School said that despite the brilliant concept, the core problem remained. "While I would welcome a bag which helps children, this is treating the symptoms and not the cause," a representative said.

In Malta, a survey drawn up in 2000 by the working committee set up by the Ministry of Education 2000 to research the problem of heavy school bags had indicated that students from Year 4 up to Form 1 Secondary carried the heaviest schoolbags. Heavy textbooks, thick copybooks and files, lunch boxes, bottles and fruit juice cartons, non-school materials and reference books, and PE, Sports and Home Economics kits contributed to a heavy load.

The working group had recommended that when more than one textbook for the same subject is prescribed, students should know which of the textbooks is to be used on any particular day.

This information should form part of the official school timetable and is to be followed by both students and teachers. A less textbook-based teaching was urged.

"There are lessons when the textbook is not used at all. With adequate planning, students should have advance notice by their subject teacher so that they can leave textbooks at home when these are not going to be used," the report stated.

"The school bag problem should be tackled as part of an ongoing comprehensive health promotion exercise aimed at enabling the students to take control of their lifestyles in order to improve their health," the report concluded.