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San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers takes his helmet off while coming off the field after throwing four consecutive incomplete passes late in the fourth quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs in an NFL football game in San Diego, California Sept. 30, 2007. An innovative football helmet was developed to protect football players from concussions, media reported Sunday. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
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BEIJING, Oct. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- An innovative football helmet was developed to protect football players from concussions, media reported Sunday.
Vin Ferrara, a former Harvard quarterback, got the idea when he happened to notice the construction of a ribbed,
plastic bottle that squirted a saline solution into the sinuses. He started
pounding the bottle and found it absorbed blows from all directions and
different forces with equal effectiveness.
"This is it," Ferrara declared. Three years later,
his squirt bottle has led to a promising new technology to protect football
players from concussions.
Rather than being lined with rows of traditional foam
or urethane, this new helmet, developed by Ferrara's company -- Xenith LLC,
contains 18 black, thermoplastic shock absorbers filled with air that can accept
a wide range of forces and still moderate the sudden jarring of the head that
causes concussion.
Laboratory impact tests have proved Ferraras theory,
with the new helmet absorbing hundreds of impacts without any degradation.
This design breakthrough has real medical
significance because studies have found that 10 to 50 percent of high school
players each season sustain concussions, whose effects can range from persistent
memory problems and depression to coma and death.
Earlier this month, the helmet passed certification
tests conducted by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic
Equipment, which certifies helmet models worn by each of the more than 2 million
football players in the United States, from pee-wees to professionals.
The helmet has not yet been tested by actual players
under game conditions and the price will be approximately 350 U.S. dollars, more
than twice the cost of existing headgear.
Dr. Robert Cantu of Brigham and Women's Hospital in
Boston, who advised Ferarra during the development of the helmet, was quoted by
media reports as saying "the greatest advance in helmet design in at least 30
years."
But experts suspect that Ferrara, who sustained
several concussions as a player himself, has developed a radically effective
design.
An NFL spokesman said that the league was aware of
Ferrara's helmet design but had not reviewed it enough to comment on it.
(Agencies)
