OnSafety is the Official Blog Site of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Here you'll find the latest safety information as well as important messages that will keep you and your family safe. We hope you'll visit often!
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By CPSC Blogger on March 20, 2013
Blog en español
While kids getting into bottles of pain medicine remains a leading cause of poisonings, new and different serious risks have emerged.
 New single-load liquid laundry packets look like candy, toys or teethers, but they are dangerous for children. This isn’t the liquid laundry detergent from your childhood. These packets are filled with highly concentrated, toxic chemicals. Wet hands, water and saliva can quickly dissolve these packets, releasing the chemicals.
In 2012, CPSC staff learned of more than 500 incidents involving children and adults who were injured by these packets. If you use these packets in your home, always handle them with dry hands and keep them out of sight and reach of children. CPSC is encouraged that the manufacturers of laundry packets are developing improved warning labels, making their product packaging less attractive to children, and have committed to implement a comprehensive consumer awareness campaign. However, CPSC seeks additional design changes to all types of packages containing laundry packets that will make individual packets less accessible to children. You should start seeing safety alerts in stores soon that alert you to important laundry packet safety concerns.
 If you have any type of electronics in your home, you likely have coin- or button-sized batteries. They are in remote controls, electronic games, toys, musical cards, hearing aids and other common electronic products. These small batteries pack a powerful —and deadly—punch. These batteries can cause life-threatening chemical burns inside the body in as little as two hours. Incidents often involve children younger than 4 and senior adults. Even completely dead batteries have enough residual power left in them to cause serious injuries.
While improvements are in the works to prevent people from suffering burn injuries if they ingest a battery, please take immediate steps to safeguard your children right now do the following:
- Check your electronics’ battery compartments and tighten with a screw.
- For battery compartments that do not use a screw, try securing them with strong tape.
- Put any item with an unsecured button battery up and out of both the sight and reach of a child.
- When the batteries die, make sure to throw them out in a way that children can’t retrieve them.
- Also, make sure to buy the correct-size replacement battery so you don’t have any batteries lying around that you don’t need.
- Finally, don’t store a remote control on top of un-anchored televisions or furniture. That creates a different, significant hazard of TV tipovers for your child.
CPSC is encouraged that the coin and button cell industry is developing more secure packaging and taking additional steps to try to keep the products away from young children. However, CPSC is looking to see design changes that eliminate the serious chemical burn injuries that often occur upon ingestion.
Here are other poison prevention tips, which can help you provide a safe environment for your children to explore.
- Keep medicines and household chemicals in their original, child-resistant containers.
- Store potentially hazardous substances up and out of a child’s sight and reach.
- Keep the national Poison Help Line number, 800-222-1222, handy in case of a poison emergency.
- When hazardous products are in use, never let young children out of your sight, even if it means you must take them along when answering the phone or doorbell.
- Leave the original labels on all products, and read the labels before using the products.
- Always leave the light on when giving or taking medicine so you can see that you are administering the proper medicine, and be sure to check the dosage every time.
- Avoid taking medicine in front of children. Refer to medicine as “medicine,” not “candy.”
- Clean out the medicine cabinet periodically and safely dispose of unneeded and outdated medicines.
- Do not put decorative lamps and candles that contain lamp oil where children can reach them. Lamp oil can be very toxic if ingested by children.
If you have a poison emergency, call the national Poison Help Line at (800) 222-1222.
This address for this post is: http://www.cpsc.gov/onsafety/2013/03/safeguard-your-home-from-emerging-poisoning-risks/
By CPSC Blogger on October 11, 2012
 Every day, six people die in home fires.
That’s 2,310 deaths on average each year.
Take a Good, Better, Best approach to fire safety in your home. Fires can happen anytime, so be ready!
GOOD:
- Install a working smoke alarm in your home. Consumers who have working smoke alarms in their homes die in fires at about half the rate of those who do not.
- Change the batteries every year.
- Replace the smoke alarms every 10 years. After all, smoke alarms don’t last forever.
BETTER:
- Multiple working smoke alarms are better than one. Install alarms on every level of your house, inside each bedroom and outside sleeping areas.
- Interconnect your smoke alarms. That way, if one smoke alarm detects a fire, all smoke alarms will sound.
- Consider installing smoke alarms that use 10-year sealed batteries. They don’t require annual battery changes.
BEST:
- Install two types of working smoke alarms in your home: ionization and photoelectric alarms. Smoke alarms use one or both of these methods, sometimes with a heat detector, to warn you about a fire. The safety standard for smoke alarms has been improved and should result in improvements to how both types of alarms perform. Ionization alarms respond quickly to flaming fires and photoelectric detectors respond sooner to smoldering fires. Make sure all alarms are interconnected.
- Have a fire escape plan and practice it. A smoke alarm can’t save your family’s lives if everyone doesn’t know what to do when it sounds. Have two ways to get out of each room and set a pre-arranged meeting place outside. And remember, once you are out of the house, stay out.
This address for this post is: http://www.cpsc.gov/onsafety/2012/10/smoke-alarms-good-better-best/
By CPSC Blogger on March 7, 2012
It’s Time Change Sunday. Yes, again. And that means it’s time to remind you to change your smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) alarm batteries.
Occasionally, we tell you about deaths in homes without working alarms. We hear these tragic stories on the news regularly or see them posted online.
But, for Daylight Saving Time this year, we want to remind you of some positive stories. These are anecdotal, as they are told through the eyes of the media and we haven’t investigated any of the facts ourselves in these cases. But they show lifesaving information about having working smoke and CO alarms in your home.
The first story comes from KSAT in San Antonio, Texas. An apartment dweller told KSAT that she installed a carbon monoxide alarm at the advice of a friend. Because of the beep of that alarm, the residents of an entire apartment building were evacuated and saved from a building with high levels of carbon monoxide, a gas that you can’t see or smell, but which can kill you.
The second story comes from BayToday in North Bay, Canada. A mom reports that she and her daughter were feeling nauseous and thought they were getting sick. An alarm was beeping, and the mom asked her husband to go turn it off. Instead of turning the alarm off, the father looked at the alarm, saw the carbon monoxide levels and got the family out of the house. Another story about a tragedy that was prevented.
So remember, buy some new batteries and take a few minutes this weekend to install them in all of your smoke and CO alarms. Then, make sure to test the alarms every month to make sure they are working.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this OnSafety blog do not reflect CPSC endorsement of any product.
This address for this post is: http://www.cpsc.gov/onsafety/2012/03/working-alarms-save-lives-really/
By CPSC Blogger on November 1, 2011
When you’re changing your clocks this Sunday, make sure to change the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms, too.
“Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms save lives by alerting you to a fire or CO buildup. They can’t do their job if the batteries aren’t working,” said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum. “Protect your family by replacing smoke and CO alarm batteries at least once each year.”
To watch this video in Adobe Flash format, you may need to download the Adobe Flash player. You can also watch the video on YouTube.
Smoke alarms should be placed on every level of the home, outside sleeping areas, and inside each bedroom. About two-thirds of fire deaths occur in homes with either no smoke alarms or smoke alarms that don’t work.
CO alarms should be installed on each level of the home and outside sleeping areas. CO alarms should not be installed in attics or basements unless they include a sleeping area. Combination smoke and CO alarms are available to consumers.
November is also a good time of year to schedule an annual professional inspection of all fuel-burning appliances, including furnaces and chimneys. This inspection helps protect against CO poisoning. Home heating systems were associated with 70 deaths, or 38 percent of CO poisoning deaths, in 2007, the largest percentage of non-fire CO poisoning deaths.
This address for this post is: http://www.cpsc.gov/onsafety/2011/11/time-change-battery-change-sunday/
By CPSC Blogger on October 12, 2011
BEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!
That’s the sound you want to hear if there’s a fire in your home. Unfortunately, too many people never hear an alarm.
We estimate that nearly 2,400 people die each year because of unintentional home fires. About two-thirds of these fire deaths occur in homes with no smoke alarms or with smoke alarms that don’t work, perhaps because someone has removed the battery and forgotten to replace it. A smoke alarm’s warning can cut the risk of dying from a fire in your home by almost half.
Beep, Beep, Beep!
Many of us have heard those smoke alarm dead battery chirps – usually at an inopportune time such as 2 a.m. A common response: Remove the battery, go back to sleep, and forget to put in a new battery.
Even when you’re sleep-deprived, that annoying sound does NOT mean remove the battery and forget about it. It means CHANGE THE BATTERY!
When you’re changing that battery, look around your home for where you have smoke alarms. Do you have one on every floor? In every bedroom?
Smoke alarms are just one layer of protection for your home. CPSC along with the National Fire Protection Association urge you to develop a fire escape plan. Each person should know two ways out of every room. Set a family meeting place outside. And then practice it twice a year. REALLY!
In addition to these two key layers of protection, follow these safe practices to prevent a fire:
- Cook Safely: Stay in the kitchen and keep a watchful eye while you are cooking. Unattended cooking is the No. 1 cause of cooking fires.
- Check your home’s electrical safety. Heating and cooling equipment are the second-most common source of home fires. Here is a checklist that walks you through how to keep your family safe room by room.
- Use caution when smoking and don’t smoke in bed. From 2006 to 2008, smoking materials caused about 600 deaths each year.
- Buy lighters with a child-safe mechanism if you have kids at home. It’s obvious, but children and fire don’t mix.
- Stop using recalled gel fuels in fire pots. CPSC has recalled millions of bottles of gel fuel due to burn and flash fire hazards. The pourable gel fuel can ignite homes unexpectedly and splatter onto people and objects nearby when it is poured into a firepot that is still burning.
This address for this post is: http://www.cpsc.gov/onsafety/2011/10/the-beep-that-can-save-your-life/
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