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Letter to the editor

How safe are we really?

By Judy Stark, Times Homes and Garden Editor
Published June 30, 2007

Most residents of the Tampa Bay area admit it: They're only somewhat or not very knowledgeable about home safety.

Responding to a survey taken for the Home Safety Council, here's what residents said:

- More than 70 percent acknowledge they store household chemicals and cleaners in that easily accessible area under the kitchen sink. Other common - and equally unsafe - storage areas include the laundry room 35 percent, garage (35 percent), and bathroom medicine cabinet (26 percent).

- 92 percent said they have not conducted a home fire drill.

- 76 percent did not know that smoke alarms should be tested once a month.

National survey results showed that although a majority of U.S. adults think about home safety often, very few do anything to prevent the major causes of home injury: falls, poisonings, fires and burns, choking/suffocation and drowning.

Only one-fifth said they were concerned about falls, the major cause of home injury. Less than a fifth have put safety locks on cabinets where they store poisons. Just more than a third have installed carbon monoxide detectors near sleeping areas in their homes.

That will change locally after July 1, 2008. A law passed in this year's session of the state Legislature requires that in every building for which a building permit is issued after that date, in which there is a heater that burns fossil fuel or in which there is a garage, a carbon monoxide detector must be installed within 10 feet of each sleeping room.

Ninety-three percent of American adults have a smoke alarm in their home, but only a quarter have developed an escape plan.

Only 39 percent require that children be seated while eating. If the kids are running around or roughhousing while they eat, they're more likely to choke. Choking/suffocation is the second leading cause of home injury death for children under age 14.

Kelton Research polled 100 people in the Tampa-St. Petersburg Designated Market Area, the media market encompassing the Tampa Bay area. It includes Citrus, Hardee, Hernando, Highlands, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, and Sarasota counties. Nationally, Harris Interactive polled 2, 322 people.

Judy Stark can be reached at (727) 893-8446 or stark@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 29, 2007, 10:27:52]