6 deadly risks lurking in your home

Accidents at home claim lives of six children each day, sending thousands of other kids to emergency room regularly

You may think your home is your family’s safe abode, but in fact, without watchfulness, it can be a downright dangerous place.

Accidents at home claim the lives of six children each day and send thousands of other kids to the emergency room regularly, according to data collected from Safe Kids Worldwide — an organisation dedicated to protecting kids from unintentional injuries. As compiled from safekids.org and Good Housekeeping magazine, watch out for these preventable trouble zones this Sunday.

Bedroom or living room that houses tall furniture

Furniture store IKEA made big news recently by voluntarily recalling a line of popular dressers after one tipped over onto a 2-year-old boy and killed him. Statistics actually show that one child dies nearly every two weeks when a large dresser, bookcase, or other larger piece falls over and crushes him or her. So what can you do? Parents should place their taller furnishings to the wall and ask your carpenter to install in brackets to prevent these from falling over, suggests Rachel Rothman, the technical and engineering director of the Good Housekeeping Institute, adding, “Teach young kids not to climb the furniture to prevent accidents.” 

Read: 6 tips to keep your home free of heat in summer

Flat-screen TV on that furniture

An estimated 41 per cent of emergency room trips involve TVs and 65 per cent of fatalities were from falling ones, according to a January 2015 Consumer Product Safety  Commission report. In fact, a survey from Safe Kids Worldwide shows 48 per cent of parents admit they haven’t secured TVs safely. How bad is that? Well, a large TV on top of an average-size dresser can fall with a lot of force . The remedy is simple: install straps into the studs in the wall to prevent tipping of flat-screen TVs. Also, only place other TV models on TV stands or media centres. 

Unsecured windows

Trips and slips occur often — out of windows, down staircases, and off of bunk beds, among other places — resulting in 150 child deaths per year. Falls are the leading cause of child-injury-related ER visits and the sole reason, in fact, why nearly 2 million kids aged 12 and under visited the ER in 2013, according to Safe Kids Worldwide. “Window screens are not strong enough to prevent a child from falling out,” explains Rothman. So she advises locking your windows carefully to keep kids secure. If you get desperate for fresh air, try to open the windows when your kids aren’t home or sleeping. 

Dangling cords

It seems so innocent, but that cord can be deadly. A child gets strangled every two weeks by the cords of not just your PlayStation and power outlets but of window shades and blinds as well. Cables and electrical cords pose a risk and should be put out of the reach of children when not in use. Keeping kids away is key, so make sure cribs, beds, and playroom furniture are not close to hazardous wiring, or curtains with cords. Completely eliminating the risk is your best bet. Make sure to install blinds with shorter hidden cords and consider calling an electrician this Sunday to get all your wirings looked at and have him fix all your wires and cables in a way that they are attached to the walls. 

Unlocked medicine cabinet

Medications are the leading cause of child poisoning, according to Safe Kids Worldwide, which  estimates that the equivalent of four busloads of kids (about 185 children) are rushed to the ER each day after having taken medicine on their own. That’s 67,700 annually or one child every eight minutes. Parents can’t be on the lookout 24/7 — you might have to shower or take care of errands, so your best bet would be to lock the meds cabinet entirely. Trust me, it’ll be inconvenient but you won’t regret it. 

A fresh-painted house

Getting your home painted can be unavoidable. If you have young kids, try to either send them to their grandparents until the paint dries out or keep them confined to the portion of the home that’s not being painted for a couple of days, and maybe, you should join them. That newly painted wall emits fumes of lead and other chemicals that are detrimental to you and your little one. Once ingested, lead can kidney damage as well as affect your central nervous system and blood cells. Even worse: “Young children are particularly vulnerable because they absorb four-to-five times as much ingested lead as adults from a given source,” according to a World Health Organisation report. “At high levels of exposure, lead can cause convulsions and even death.”

By Umnia Shahid

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2015.

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