The study, which was published on Monday, found that despite federal safety standards being updated in 2010, baby walkers have yet to prove that they are worth the risk to kids.

Between 1990 and 2014, an estimated 230,676 children 15 months and younger were treated for walker-related injuries in hospitals across the country. That means that an average of 9,000 kids per year have been treated for things like broken bones and falling down the stairs. In addition, one particularly scary finding in the study noted, "infant walkers also give young children access to environments and objects that they might not otherwise be able to reach. This can result in proximity injuries from such actions as touching a hot oven door, grabbing sharp objects, or ingesting household poisons."

The study found that although the intention behind walkers is to increase mobility and independence, instead "injuries can be severe and can include skull fracture, brain injury, burns, poisoning, and drowning."

"Baby walkers give quick mobility -- up to 4 feet per second -- to young children before they are developmentally ready. Children at this age are curious, but do not recognize danger," one of the authors of the study, Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, explained to CBS News.

"It only takes a young sibling to leave the door to the basement stairs open briefly for an injury to occur. A child in a baby walker would be across the room and down the stairs before the parent could respond." In fact, the study found that a whopping 74.1 percent of infants were injured in incidents related to falling down the stairs.

Baby in a baby walker
Patryk Kosmider/Shutterstock

In 1992, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) called for a ban on walkers but was largely ignored by retailers who continued to sell them. But by 2010 the CPSC stepped in to give the safety standards of walkers a reboot, demanding that companies implement rigorous standards when it came to manufacturing.

Amongst the top of the CPSC's concerns was preventing kids from falling down the stairs when facing the opposite way of a staircase, making sure that walkers were tipping resistant, making sure that walkers could bare the load of a child jumping and bouncing in his or her seat, and occupant retention (making sure that your child wouldn't be trapped in the seat by leg holes that were too small).

In the four years that the study examined after these safety regulations became federally mandated, injuries did fall by 22.7 percent. But still, safety experts note that walkers are dangerous and do more harm than good.

"I view infant walkers as inherently dangerous objects that have no benefit whatsoever and should not be sold in the US," Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, a pediatrician who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, told National Public Radio.

Smith told NPR that "despite this great success, there are still 2,000 children a year being treated for injuries, many of them serious injuries, in emergency departments. Therefore, we support the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics that baby walkers should not be sold or used."

He added that even the most careful parents -- especially parents who believe that monitored use of walkers is acceptable -- shouldn't buy into the hype. "Parents bought the myth that if they watched their children carefully they wouldn't get into trouble," he said. "But that was a myth."

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