How to make your home safer

Home related injuries in America are a much bigger problem than any people realize resulting in almost 20,000 deaths each year and more than 21 million medical visits.

June is a perfect time for people to take stock of their own situation to make their home a safe haven that we all want it to be. And in honor of home safety month, the home council is launching a new resource called mysafehome.org which is an online tour of the home enabling to go people room by room. We point out what are the things in the room that might put your family at risk and what can you do about it.

We did some surveying and found out that many people were concerned about the kitchen number one and so of course mysafehome.org features a lovely kitchen. Among the many things you might learn in terms of risks in the kitchen is that hot stove surface particularly if you have little children living in and around your home or even visiting.

You want to make sure that children stay well away, so we recommend creating a kid free-zone taking masking tape and actually blocking off a three foot zone around the stove and then teaching little ones to stay outside that area at all times. So, this is an example of the kind of practical advice you get when you tour mysafehome.org online.

We also go outside the home and particularly in the summer months, we want people to be very careful from risks involving the backyard pool for example. So, we talked about things like—if you have a backyard pool, make sure to have four-sided fencing, isolation fencing that goes all the way around the pool and making sure that little children are supervised every second whenever there is even a few inches of water around because drowning can be a sudden and silent event and you really have to pay attention.

Another area that a lot of parents that do not know too much about is the need to create a safe play zone for your children and if you have playground equipment in the backyard, it is important to have a soft landing around it and underneath it and by this we mean nine to 12 inches of a soft material like rubber mulch or wood mulch, pea gravel or a nice soft cushion because children go up and then they come down and when they do we need to make sure that their fall is cushioned so they do not sustain a broken limb or even worst head trauma.

So, these are simple things people can do around their home to be safe. Some of them will cost a thing, some of them would require a little investment, but we believe there is really no better investment you can make than to create a safe home for your loved ones.


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