By: Dona DeZube
What do your furnace, your windows, and your gas grill have in common? They’re all conspiring to do you harm if you’re not careful. Here’s how to protect yourself and your family from easily preventable accidents.
Carbon monoxide detectors save lives. Be sure to install at least one in your home and check it regularly to ensure that it works.
If your furnace or a gas appliance malfunctions, your house could fill with odorless, colorless, carbon monoxide gas that can be fatal. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that carbon monoxide poisoning kills over 400 people annually.
Creosote can be a killer. A by-product of bio fuels, such as firewood, creosote can build up on your chimney walls. This tar-like substance is highly flammable and can catch fire, melting the mortar, cracking tiles, and causing flue liners to collapse.
If the flames reach the exposed wood frame of your house, it could burn down in a matter of minutes. About 170 people a year die from fireplace and chimney fires.
You turn on your gas grill with the lid shut, go in the house, find your matches, then come back out and strike a match, blowing up your gas grill, knocking you unconscious, and setting your house aflame.
About 35 people die from propane-related explosions in the average year.
Drowning causes almost 2% of all unintentional injury deaths nationally. In states where pools are common, such as Florida, drowning is a leading cause of death for children 1- to 4-years-old.
You open the window in your bedroom to get some fresh air on a hot summer day. Your 10-year-old twins are jumping on the bed and one of them falls against the window screen. The screen pops out and drops down to the front yard of your multi-story condo. That narrow escape could have ended in disaster — 15 to 20 children under the age of 11 die annually from falls out of windows.
Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.