Hundreds of thousands of Americans injure themselves in the bathroom each year, the US government reported as part of an effort to raise awareness about washroom hazards.

“Non-fatal, unintentional bathroom injuries” in people age 15 and older were probed by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that 234,094 people were treated in the emergency room after bathing or using the toilet in 2008.

The riskiest locales were the bathtub or shower. Bathing was identified as the “precipitating event” for injury in 37 per cent of cases, followed by slipping while bathing in 17 per cent of cases.

People who fell while “standing up from, sitting down on, or using the toilet” made up 14 per cent of injury cases. Just over five per cent of those injuries resulted in a loss of consciousness.

The top diagnoses were contusion or abrasion (29.3 people), strain or sprain (19.6 per cent), and fracture (17.4 per cent), the report said.