he knitted tea cosy, once the centrepiece of British drinking habits, may be putting undue strain on the National Health Service, a government report has found.
Tea cosies incorrectly lifted off the pot or dropped on the floor are responsible for around 40 emergency hospital treatments a year, and cosy accidents have doubled in recent years.
The latest Department of Trade and Industry report on domestic accidents has found that the simplest tasks, such as serving tea or walking down a corridor, cause great problems to the British.
Almost 600,000 people need emergency hospital treatment each year after colliding with other people or objects such as armchairs.
More than 3,000 people a year are taken to casualty after falling over laundry baskets. Hundreds of others are treated after swallowing false teeth, or ingesting talcum powder.
Clogs, badly fitting or carelessly left on stairs, cause 300 accidents a year, closely followed by place mats (165), dustpans (146) and bread bins (91).
The DTI home accident surveillance report, which draws on hospital statistics for 1999, found that 76 people were killed each week in domestic accidents - more than died in road accidents.
The most vulnerable were pensioners and small children. Some of the biggest killers in the household were DIY tools, stairs, carpets and kettles of boiling water.
Certain mundane objects were more dangerous than others. Glossy magazines caused four times more accidents than chainsaws. Beanbags did more harm than meat cleavers.
The number of people who concussed themselves by running into a tree trunk rose to almost 2,000 a year.
Trousers presented an unnecessary hazard, with almost 6,000 people spraining, twisting or breaking a limb attempting to zip up their flies.
Hospital admissions for those attempting to pull up socks and tights reached a high of more than 10,000.
People were advised not to remove tights while drunk - around 100,000 accidents a year could be attributed to alcohol.
Sponge and loofah accidents declined, from 996 to 787 a year, and armchair-related accidents were down from 18,690 to 16,662. But injuries attributed to vegetable preparation remained unacceptably high at 13,132.
A DTI spokeswoman said the information had been collated to help to develop consumer safety policy, and an extra £1m had been made available to accident prevention groups.
The DTI runs its own campaigns on how to avoid falls in the home, drowning in garden ponds and cutting off fingers during DIY.
A spokeswoman for the Royal Society of the Prevention of Accidents said: "People can be injured by some quite unlikely items and more people are injured in the home than anywhere else.
"At work and on the roads we are regulated, but at home we let our guard down. You can do serious damage if you pull a tea cosy off and drop the teapot full of hot water on your foot. The most common accident is caused by slipping on a rug or carpet. These are serious issues about taking precautions in the home."
The Association of British Insurers said victims of mishaps involving items such as tea cosies or lawn mowers could claim on household insurance if they had accidental damage cover.
A spokesman said: "Personal injuries cover is very common, but you would have to have a major injury in order to claim. Dropping a tea cosy on your foot would not usually count, unless it had a teapot in it."
