Albemarle County parent Mark Lorenzoni took little notice of his children's knapsacks until three years ago, when his then 9-year-old son, Adrian, left his bag in the middle of a room.

"It was on the floor, and I tried to kick it out of the way," Lorenzoni said.

"It didn't move, and I lifted it up."

Stunned at its heft, Lorenzoni weighed the bookbag, which came in at 21 pounds - nearly a third of his 69-pound son's weight.

Backpacks, which according to doctors should weigh in at 10 percent to 15 percent of their owner's weight, are often 25 percent to 35 percent, pulling backs and necks out of whack.

Led by Lorenzoni, a "backpack task force" of concerned Albemarle parents, teachers, principals and nurses is taking steps to remedy the situation.

Young children are seeing chiropractors and other doctors for spine and neck problems, they report.

The long-term effects of carrying heavy backpacks are unknown because the issue rarely has been studied, Lorenzoni said.

The task force recently put forth a list of suggestions to the Albemarle School Board in an effort to lighten the load.

They include low-cost ideas - allowing elementary pupils a few minutes at the end of the school day to organize their bags - as well as pricier options, such as replacing books with CD-ROMs.

Although task force members admit CD-ROM texts are a ways off for Albemarle, they see the purchase of an extra set of books for classrooms as a possibility.

The problem is particularly bad in elementary and middle schools, where children are apt to bring unnecessary books home from school, Lorenzoni and others say.

"Kids' tennis shoes, their coats, any personal items, they stuff in their backpacks," said Burley Middle School Principal Bernard Hairston, whose son is a seventh-grader there.

Burley is a pioneer in backpack safety, Lorenzoni said, and indeed, the school's rules differ from those the pupils' parents may remember.

Sixth- and eighth-graders, who have less distance to travel than seventh- graders in the four minutes between periods, cannot take their bags to class.

Teachers monitor the amount of nightly homework, and sixth-grade science and social studies classes use two sets of texts - one for home, the other for school.

Those rules and a two-day lesson on backpack safety in health classes have made a difference, Hairston said, particularly in the way students carry their bags.

Many Burley pupils pull backpacks on wheels, and most others place the bags' straps squarely on both shoulders instead of just one, a fashionable method that likely led to back and shoulder harm, Lorenzoni said.

Julia Weed, a Burley science teacher, has noticed that some pupils put the cumbersome wheeled backpacks on their backs, particularly when climbing the stairs.

Other pupils have very large bags in which they carry very large notebooks, the teacher observed.

The situation reminded Weed of an adage: "Beware the big suitcase, because you'll always fill it up."

Alyssa Hatfield, a Burley seventh-grader, said her mother gave her a bag on wheels last year, but it didn't fit in her locker.

Now she wears a traditional backpack with inflated straps - one on each shoulder. It weighed 10 pounds one recent night as Alyssa worked on homework at her mother's chiropractic clinic.

Still, carrying a backpack on both shoulders won't put a stop to all back and neck problems, said Alyssa's mother, chiropractor Suzanne Coffey, who has advised schools on the problem.

Pupils tend to let the straps out long, allowing the backpack to hit well below the waist. Even Alyssa's knapsack rides a little low.

For optimal back health, the bag should be pulled up as high as possible, Coffey said.

"Posture is everything," she said.

From Healthy.net