home safety

Getting your home "child proofed" is a difficult task to get perfect, but by starting with these simple tips, it can be much easier. Even fun!

Since 2012 when liquid laundry packets began gaining traction in the market, more than 33,000 calls for children 5 and under have been reported to poison centers about children getting into liquid laundry packets. That’s more than 30 children every single day.

Poison Prevention Week is March 15 – 21, and Safe Kids is releasing new research, “Medicine Safety for Children: An In-Depth Look at Calls to Poison Centers,” to explore medicine safety for children. In partnership with the American Association of Poison Control Centers, and with support from McNeil Consumer Healthcare, we analyzed more than 547,000 calls to poison centers to better understand what types of medicines little kids and teens are getting into and how it happens.

With people still talking about the Nationwide Super Bowl ad that brought dramatic attention to the number one killer of kids, preventable injuries, we’re releasing new research that reveals the scope of the problem in a place most parents assume is safe: the home. Every day, six children die from an injury in the home, and 10,000 go to the emergency department for the kinds of injuries that commonly happen in homes.

We talk a lot about safe storage and the importance of keeping medicine up and away, out of reach of children. And that’s important: In 67 percent of emergency room visits for medicine poisoning, the medicine was left within reach of a child, such as in a purse, on a counter or dresser or on the ground.

What is equally important, though, is safe dosing.

We have some exciting news to share. Safe Kids has entered into a new partnership with Nationwide. Our work together will focus on a national initiative to help families stay safe at home, including fire safety, water safety, and preventing poisoning and falls. This will provide Safe Kids with an opportunity to reach even more families with the safety information they need to keep kids safe and prevent injuries.

I was 30 when I gave myself a concussion by pulling a TV onto my head. I’d be willing to bet that this doesn’t happen to many adults (unless they are generally clumsy humans, like me).

But did you know that in the past 10 years, a child has visited the emergency room every 45 minutes because of a TV tipping over? And unfortunately, these preventable injuries can sometimes be fatal.

Here's the information I want every family to know. Children are falling from windows at an alarming rate – more than 3,300 kids five and under go to the emergency every year. Window falls are a completely preventable.  All windows should have window guards, child safe window stops or 4-inch window opening limiters.  We recommend Guardian Angel window guards, KidCo window stops or KidCo mesh window guards because these all meet ASTM safety standards.