Top 5 Most Dangerous Areas of the Home

There's no place like home?for accidental injury and death. Knowing and identifying the five most dangerous areas of your home might just save your life. In terms of simple injuries, no place can really compete with the kitchen, where burns, sharp objects, and general carelessness rule, but these five places have inherent, but fixable, dangers that you should pay attention to right now.

#5 Your Yard: As dangerous as the interior of your home can be, there are several areas outside the home that are cause for serious concern. Swimming pools have to rank highest among outdoor dangers. According to the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death to children ages one through four. Even if you don't have kids, it's worth nothing that the same reports says that between 2005 and 2007 there were 2,700 serious injuries from pools and spas. Non-fatal drowning is a common cause of brain damage, such as memory loss, learning disabilities, and even permanent vegetative states. Fortunately, the installation of a well-designed pool fence can reduce this risk.

The other great danger in yards has a more subtle nature. The composition and design of your yard can play a significant role in deterring burglars, who almost always identify vulnerable homes before taking any action. Identifying places that are hidden from view such as under decks, large trees, and access points such as doors and windows are critical to understanding where and how your home may be vulnerable. Well-designed outdoor lighting including motion sensors, bulbs placed high enough that can't be easily broken, and lighting with mild illumination but a broad coverage area can help minimize this risk.

#4 Your Floors and Stairs: If most home safety statistics are rightfully focused on child safety, the statistics for senior citizens can be even scarier. The Center for Disease Control estimates that each year one out of every three senior citizens will fall this year, and one out of every four of these falls causes moderate to serious injury that results in reduced mobility and independence, and increases the risk of premature death. More than half of these falls occur at home.

Poor walking gait and a reduced capacity to regain balance helps explain why so many senior citizens fall, but more often than not, there is an environmental cause as well. Obvious tripping hazards include clutter, rugs, and slippery surfaces such as bathtubs, stairs, and some decking. Some of the more underestimated causes of tripping include loose carpeting, poor lighting, and unstable furniture.

#3 Your Chimney/Fireplace: Fireplaces, chimneys, and wood stoves account for about a third of all residential fires, but these fires also tend to be some of the most insidious and dangerous hazards in the home. Unattended fires or poor fireplace maintenance/operation are a huge problem, but chimney fires produce some of the fiercest infernos. A wood-burning fireplace causes creosote to build up in the chimney. People who don't have their chimneys regularly cleaned can have this creosote ignite. Chimney fires are some of the hottest fires in the home and can consume your home and household with little warning time.

The insidious nature of chimney fires is that, frequently they go out on their own after causing moderate structural damage to your chimney. This damage can include cracks that will cause insulation, wood beams, or electrical wiring outside your chimney to ignite the next time you use your fireplace. Or, worse, these cracks can allow the carbon monoxide that is usually safely vented outside your home to stay and build inside your home. Thus, otherwise safe fireplaces can suddenly cause carbon monoxide poisoning.

#2 Behind Your Walls: Many homes don't have swimming pools, elderly household members, or chimneys, but every home was walls. Any number of hazards can be lingering behind your walls undetected until they manifest into life-threatening problems. Asbestos and mold are only two of the more common hazards hiding behind your walls, but these are just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. Faulty electrical wiring, lying just behind your walls and sockets, can smolder for years and then spontaneously erupt, causing a smokeless, odorless electrical fire.

Perhaps the most common danger lying behind residential walls is pests. Any number of pests including termites, squirrels, rats, bats, and birds—just to name a few—can introduce dozens of different diseases to your home. Urine and feces are the most common ways in which these diseases are transmitted. The feces doesn't even need to be directly handled, as you can breathe in fecal dust. Moreover, these same pests can chew through electrical wiring, yet another fire hazard.

#1 The Air You Breathe: Simultaneously the most ubiquitous and overlooked hazard in the home, you'll probably be surprised by just how much your harming yourself by breathing in your home. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are the beginning of creating safe indoor air quality. Remember the mold we were talking about? Visible or behind your walls, it will enter the air in your home. A study of 210 patients with chronic sinus infections conducted by the Mayo Clinic found that 93 percent of these cases were caused by mold allergies. In the press, toxic mold and severe respiratory problems associated with household mold is exaggerated for catchy headlines, but chronic symptoms including respiratory problems, headaches, memory loss, nausea, and fatigue are underrepresented.

That said, as much as high mold content may be overlooked, the dangers associated with radon are, too often, completely ignored. The EPA estimates that one out of every 12 homes has unacceptably high levels of radon gas. This gas which is emitted from radium beneath the ground and can enter your home in dozens of places is the second-leading cause of lung cancer, responsible for more than 20,000 deaths every year in the U.S. alone. But what's truly sad is that you can get your home tested for radon levels for less than $20.

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