The Nation's Quiet Crisis: Unintentional Home Injuries; New Study Reveals That Americans Ignore Safety Hazards in Their Home

9/26/2002

From: Suzanne McCoy Barr of the Home Safety Council, 336-658-5561 Laura Muma of Golin/Harris International, 312-729-4365

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 -- Ask Americans where they feel safest and most will say their own home. But according to a new study released today by the Home Safety Council and the University of North Carolina's Injury Prevention Research Center, the opposite is true. The State of Home Safety in America(tm) report found Americans make more than 20 million medical visits due to unintentional home injuries each year. In fact, after motor vehicles, the home is the most common location of unintentional fatal injures.

The report found falls to be the most common fatal home injury, followed by poisonings, fires, inhalations, and suffocation and drowning. Resulting in nearly 20,000 fatalities annually, these injuries represent a total cost to society of nearly $380 billion each year.

The Home Safety Council's survey showed a majority of Americans (56 percent) surveyed nationally could think of nothing they should or would do in the coming year to prevent unintentional injuries or make their homes safer.

"The tragedy is made worse by the fact that the vast majority of injuries in the home are entirely preventable," said David Oliver, president and executive director of the Home Safety Council. "Our findings make it clear that for most people the problem is invisible. They don mosquito repellant to guard against the well-publicized West Nile Virus, while failing to realize that falls and fires at home pose a far greater risk of death.

"We take our homes for granted," Oliver said. "We don't make things safer because for the most part we don't even know the problem exists."

Researchers believe that as bad as the numbers are in the report, true figures are far worse. For example, the numbers do not reflect the number of home injuries that might be included in the more than one-third of non-transportation injury deaths for which "location" was never recorded.

"No standard method appears to exist for reporting home injuries," said Dr. Carol Runyan, lead researcher and director of the Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC). "To better determine the scope of home injuries, a universal definition of such injuries needs to be created and guidelines developed for reporting these injuries in medical records."

To compile the report, IPRC analyzed existing data from death certificates, emergency departments and clinic records and other safety studies that included injuries in the home. The Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation developed cost estimates associated with both fatal and nonfatal injuries. In addition, IPRC researchers conducted a phone survey of 1,003 households nationwide. The analysis and results from the consumer survey will serve as a foundation for the Home Safety Council to initiate a call to action for the general public to reduce home injuries.

"This country can no longer afford to ignore the issue -- to write-off home safety as something too ordinary to deserve attention," said Oliver. "It is critical that media, government, industry, schools, parents and children join with us in establishing a stronger culture of safety in America."

To help reduce the number of unintentional home injuries, the Home Safety Council developed a four-pronged strategy that includes advocating better research and reporting methods across all fields; educating people about home injuries and how to prevent them; activating and empowering Americans to live more safely at home; and collaborating with other key stakeholders to address the complex problem of reporting and reducing home injuries.

The Home Safety Council is a not-for-profit organization dedicated solely to the prevention of and education about home injuries. Originally founded by Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse in 1993, the Council is an independent, 501c3, charitable organization with the mission to empower, educate and activate society to practice better home safety to prevent injuries and save lives. For additional home safety information and free brochures, visit www.homesafetycouncil.org.