What should I do about a burn or scald in the kitchen?

Kitchen burns are common and most are minor, but the difference between a burn that heals cleanly in a week and one that scars is very often what happened in the first twenty minutes. Steam and hot oil are the two that do the most damage and both are routinely underestimated.

Safety

Step by step

1. Stop the burning immediately.Move the person away from the heat. Take off anything hot or soaked in hot liquid, unless it is stuck to the skin — then leave it. Remove rings, watches and tight clothing from the affected area straight away, before swelling begins, because they become tourniquets.
2. Cool under running water for a full 20 minutes.Cool or lukewarm running water, not cold and not ice. Twenty minutes is the figure and it is much longer than people think — most first aid failures are stopping after two. It works up to about three hours after the injury, so it is still worth doing late.
3. Do not use ice, butter, oil, toothpaste or creams.Ice damages the tissue further and can cause a cold injury on skin that is already compromised. Butter and oils hold heat in. Toothpaste and household creams introduce contamination and have to be cleaned off before anyone can assess the wound. Water only.
4. Keep the rest of the person warm while you cool the burn.Twenty minutes of running water cools the whole body, especially in a child or an older person. Put a blanket or a coat over them while keeping it off the burn itself.
5. Cover the burn loosely.Cling film laid lengthways over the burn — not wrapped around a limb, because swelling needs room — or a clean non-fluffy cloth or a sterile dressing. This keeps it clean and reduces pain by keeping air off. Do not put cling film on a facial burn; use a clean damp cloth.
6. Leave blisters alone.An intact blister is a sterile dressing the body has made. Do not burst it. If it bursts on its own, keep it clean and covered and see a pharmacist or GP if it is large or in an awkward place.
7. Know when it needs medical attention.Go to A&E or call 999 for any burn bigger than the palm of the person's hand, any burn that is deep, white, leathery or charred, any that goes all the way round a limb, any chemical or electrical burn, and any burn on the face, hands, feet, joints or genitals. Also for any burn on a baby, a young child, a pregnant woman or an older person. Anything else that blisters is worth a call to 111 or a pharmacist.
8. Treat oil and steam burns as serious by default.Hot oil is far above the temperature of boiling water and it clings, so it goes on burning after contact. Steam carries a great deal of energy and releases it into the skin as it condenses, so a steam scald is often deeper than it first looks. Cool both for the full 20 minutes and get them looked at if they blister.

Tips

• Turn pan handles inward on the hob, always. Almost every serious scald involving a small child in a kitchen is a pan pulled off a hob.
• Long oven gloves that cover the forearm prevent the classic burn from the oven shelf or the top of the door. Never use a damp cloth as a glove — water conducts heat straight through.
• Open a lid, a foil parcel or an oven door away from your face. The first release of steam is the most concentrated and the eyes and face are the worst place for it.
• Keep a fire blanket within reach of the hob but not directly above it, and know where it is without looking. If oil catches fire, turn off the heat if you can reach it safely, cover the pan and leave it — never move it and never use water.

Common mistakes

• Putting ice or a bag of frozen peas on a burn — It causes further tissue damage on skin that is already injured and can make the eventual scar worse. Cool running water is the treatment for the full 20 minutes.
• Stopping the cooling after a couple of minutes because it stops hurting — The cooling is not only pain relief — it is removing residual heat from the deeper tissue, where damage continues after the surface feels better. Twenty minutes is the target.

Questions people ask