Preventing Home Accidents

There is a statistical gap between what we think we know and what we actually know about home safety. Home safety accidents disable more than 12 million people in the home every year and is the fifth leading cause of death. Forty-five percent of all unintentional deaths occur in and around the home environment, claiming the lives of children, aging parents, spouses, partners, and friends. Despite what we think we know or want to believe, the home environment is one of the most hazardous environments we inhabit. But how can we expect to protect ourselves and the ones we love if we aren't even aware there is a problem?

According to home safety expert Dan Hannan's Safe at Home: A Resource for Making the Home a Safe Place, the news isn't all bad. In fact, he says, the statistics are largely reversible and avoidable, as long as we can change our behavior. Hannan says 75% of all unintentional injuries and deaths in the home hinge on our behavior, more specifically, on the decisions we make. And the first and most important home safety decision we should make is to improve our hazard recognition skills and become more safety conscious. Is it worth risking the alternative?

Homeowner's can't rely on product recalls or state and federal agencies to keep them and their loved ones safe in the home. Unlike other safety campaigns seen in our communities, the policing and protection of our home environment depends entirely on the homeowner. Safe at Home: A Resource for Making the Home a Safe Place offers simple techniques to raise home-safety awareness and improve our abilities to recognize hazards, correct hazards and prevent unintentional accidents from occurring in the home.

Each chapter of Safe at Home: A Resource for Making the Home a Safe Place has high quality imagery provided by equipment manufacturers to illustrate safety procedures; identifies problems and hazards and their relevance to the home environment; recommends safety practices to assist homeowners in identifying hazards; gives action items for proactive prevention of accidents; has a safety inspection checklist allowing homeowners to be thorough and organized in their approach to home safety; and lists a reference section providing links and other resources for additional related safety information.

Dan Hannan, CSP, has been a safety, health and environmental professional for more than twenty years. He has been an educator and trainer on safety issues for the entirety of his professional career and has developed training tools and online computer learning coursework. Dan is also a certified OSHA instructor as well as Hazardous Material Manager, and routinely trains construction and general industry workforces in classroom, seminar and webcast settings. Dan has presented to such national organizations as the Associated General Contractors of America, National Association of Medical Examiners and the Academy of Hazardous Material Managers and is currently offering construction safety training courses for the University of Minnesota under Federal grant. Dan has also authored several articles in national trade publications such as American Society of Training and Development, Chief Learning Officer, American Society of Safety Engineers, and Environmental Health and Safety Today. Dan Hannan lives in Roberts, Wisconsin with his wife and two daughters.