Nearly a quarter of a million Americans end up in hospital emergency rooms each year, suffering from home-repair injuries.
Sometimes safety is a matter of wardrobe. For instance, if youre painting or using chemicals, wear goggles. If youre sanding or stirring up clouds of dust, wear a disposable paper mask. Wear rubber gloves if youre working with oven cleaners, corrosive or abrasive liquids, grout or trees that have been chemically sprayed. Wear knee pads if doing any kind of floor work. If youre working with power tools, dont wear sloppy or loose clothing that can get caught in the machinery. If you have long hair, tie it back.
Powers saws in home workshops are the biggest accident culprits, says the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System of the Consumer Products Safety Commission. There were almost seventy-nine thousand such accidents in one recent year. A close second are manual tools chiefly the hammer which are also responsible for thousands of accidents sufficiently serious to require hospital emergency care. Perhaps the most potentially lethal power tool is the lawn mower. You should make sure there are no rocks in your path and no grandchildren or other bystanders around.
Almost twenty-one thousand accidents every year involve batteries, both automobile ones and the dry-cell types that power flashlights and childrens toys. Most of the injuries are chemical burns, but a number are caused by battery explosions. Car batteries contain sulfuric acid, and the chemical reaction that produces electricity also produces explosive gases, which can be ignited either by a spark from the battery or by a cigarette. They can also explode when the do-it-yourselfer tries to jump-start a dead battery but gets the cables on the wrong poles positive to negative.
Even the dry cell can explode or leak acid, causing skin and eye burns. It is wise to use protective gloves when working with wetand dry-cell batteries, and hands should be washed thoroughly afterward. If acid does get into the eye, the eye should be flushed thoroughly and a doctor should be seen as soon as possible.
