A boost for backpack safety

Backpacks, loaded with books, musical instruments, athletic equipment, and even toys, are a heavier burden for students today than ever before. Choosing the wrong backpack or carrying one improperly can mean back, neck, and shoulder pain, a problem that occupational therapists are increasingly seeing in children. Karen Jacobs, a professor of occupational therapy at Boston University and former president of the American Occupational Therapy Association, helped institute the country's first National School Backpack Awareness Day three years ago. She will travel to Iceland next month on a Fulbright scholarship to introduce backpack safety and start a similar awareness day. In a recent interview with Globe staff writer Tracy Jan , Jacobs, 54, discussed how parents can help their children choose the right backpacks, which she calls children's ''portable life support systems."

Q: How did you get on the backpack kick?

A: I have three children. They're the whole reason I started this whole initiative. I was driving them to school one day about six years ago and I was looking at the corner where there were kids waiting for the bus. They were pushing each other and wearing these huge backpacks. Their center of gravity was off, and they fell on their backpacks. Their arms and legs were flailing. They looked like turtles.

Q: So what should parents be looking for in a backpack?

A: Younger children are very smitten with what the backpack looks like. The color, the superhero on it. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily the right backpack for them. It's good to look for padded shoulder straps. The younger child more than likely may not want to have a hip strap or chest strap, but that's what we're advising as the child gets older, and their books get heavier. They take the pressure off the shoulders. More is not necessarily better. Children get smitten by lots and lots of compartments and what happens is they fill them all up.

Q: How can parents help lighten the load?

A: One of the issues is making sure that what they're taking to school is essential. A backpack shouldn't make children beasts of burden. I've seen excessive bottles of water. I go into kids' backpacks and it looks like they're going to a desert island. I went into a fifth-grader's backpack and she took a 10-pound stuffed frog to school and she only weighed about 60 pounds. The key thing I tell parents is to take control. Go through your children's backpacks and see what they're bringing to school. I bet they'd be surprised. With my own children, makeup was a big thing -- nail polish and lipstick and eye makeup. Then you add a hairbrush and all the clips. I've seen children bring blow-dryers to school. Some kids bring staplers and hole punchers. All those little things add up.

Q: What is the proper way to pack and wear a backpack?

A: You want the heaviest item closest to your back. So if you have a laptop computer, a Trapper Keeper or a very heavy chemistry book, you try to put that closest to your back in your backpack because the closer it is to your body, the easier it is to keep your center of gravity. Parents need to make sure the backpack fits the child's back. The bag should fit within the rectangle part of the back, from below the shoulder blades to the small of the back. The padded straps should be comfortable on both shoulders and the chest and hip straps should be snug. A lot of kids think it's only cool to wear their backpacks over one shoulder. A lot of the pressure that could be distributed through their back is now on one shoulder and our shoulder has nerves and blood vessels and we don't want to compress that. There's nothing wrong with taking a book out of a heavy backpack and carrying it in front of you.

Q: What about backpacks with wheels?

A: I actually use one myself. I have three. I schlep around a laptop. I've taken them all over the world. But if a school has a lot of stairs or if the lockers are small, they become problematic. A lot of times children do not like it because they think it looks funny. Or kids can fool around with it and hurt each other, like running over each other's feet. Children can make anything into weapons.

Q: What happens on National School Backpack Awareness Day on Sept. 21?

A: Occupational therapists go to schools and we do weigh-ins in the gym, classrooms, auditorium, or cafeteria. We'll have bathroom scales all over the place and the child will weigh the backpack they came to school with and we'll get the child's weight and then we'll calculate the percentage of the backpack in relation to the child's weight. The American Occupational Therapy Association does not recommend a backpack weighing any more than 15 percent of a child's weight. So a child who weighs 100 pounds should not have a backpack heavier than 15 pounds.