Pressure cooker blasts occur at countertop height, so injuries radiate outward across torsos, arms, and faces. Boulder surgeons report six frequent trauma patterns:
- Severe thermal burns on the chest, abdomen, arms, and neck that often demand skin grafts, debridement, and months of wound-care visits.
- Facial and ocular damage when boiling liquid splashes upward, causing corneal scarring or partial blindness.
- Hand and wrist injuries—fractured metacarpals, ruptured tendons, and nerve lesions—occur because victims instinctively grab the cooker or fling it aside.
- Deep lacerations and blunt-force wounds from metal shards or shattered glass lids propelled by the blast wave.
- Psychological fallout such as post-traumatic stress disorder, cooking anxiety, and sleep disturbance—especially common among children who witness the explosion in Boulder family homes.
- Secondary infections and hypertrophic scarring that appear weeks later, sometimes requiring revision surgery or compression-garment therapy.
