Burn injuries are painful, life-altering, and sometimes irreversible. In the most extreme cases, they can even cause death. Understanding how to effectively safeguard your living spaces from burn hazards is crucial to living a long, healthy life. To assist you in this pursuit, here are eight critical burn injury prevention tips you should know about:
1. Have Access to a Fire Extinguisher
Whether you’re looking to secure your home or a workplace, you need to ensure that quick, reasonable access to a fire extinguisher exists within every building you spend time in. Preventing burn injuries requires getting fires under control as soon as humanly possible, after all, and this is difficult without a functioning fire extinguisher. If you experience a harsh burn injury at work, due to the lack of a fire extinguisher, a burn injury attorney can help you seek the compensation you deserve.
2. Cook in Proper Clothing
Cooking is a relaxing, fulfilling way to eat cheaply, healthily, and deliciously. That being said, if you are not safe while cooking, the chances of being burned, or even electrocuted, becomes quite high. One of the safest ways to protect yourself from cooking-related burn injuries is by wearing proper, skin-covering clothing every time you go into the kitchen. If you’re dealing with boiling water, you may want extra protection.
3. Keep Hot Liquids Away from Children
Speaking of boiling water, keeping all hot liquids far out of any child’s reach is every adult’s responsibility. Boiling water and other hot liquids can cause serious, and even irreversible burns and nerve damage (and they are also extremely painful). If you have rambunctious pets, you should do your best to keep hot liquids out of their reach as well (as Fido will have a hard time understanding how quickly hot liquids can harm him).
4. Be Careful in Hot Weather
Heat exhaustion and sunburn are serious risks that Americans often fail to take seriously. Even if you’re used to hot weather, and intense sun, being lax about skin protection can lead to painful, nerve-damaging sunburns and heat exhaustion much more quickly than you might expect. Using proper sun lotions, and ensuring that you keep your extremities covered if you’ll be spending a lot of time under a hot sun, is crucial for your protection.
5. Secure Electrical Outlets
Beyond electrocution risks, uncovered and unsecured electrical outlets can also cause serious electrical burns. If someone plugs something into a malfunctioning outlet, or if a child sticks something metallic into a socket, they can be seriously burned, and even face fatal consequences. Whether you live alone, or with children, you should ensure all of your electrical outlets are properly sealed off when they are not in use.
6. Never Smoke in Bed
Smoking in bed used to be a norm in society a hundred years ago. Thankfully, that is no longer the case, and many people refuse to smoke in their homes at all. Even still, it’s important to remember that if you are smoking in your home, that you never do so in bed. When you smoke in a place where you could suddenly fall asleep, you pose the risk of your cigarette catching the room (and your bed) on fire. This puts everyone in the home and the surrounding area in harm’s way.
7. Avoid Having Electric Appliances Near Water
While it may seem like common sense, many people fail to realize just how little electrical current it can take for a small patch of water (in a sink or tub) to become fatally charged. If you’re using an electric appliance in a room with a sink or tub, keep those electrical appliances as far away from the water as possible. If you have children, you need to teach them this burn and electrocution prevention tip as soon as they’re old enough to start using electrical appliances on their own (and even before that).
8. Store Harmful Chemicals in a Secure Area
Chemical burns are some of the most painful, irreversible burns possible. If you have chemicals that present a burn hazard, you need to keep them locked up and secured whenever you’re not using them. When you do need to use them, use rubber gloves and other proper clothing to protect yourself in the case of a spill. Doing so can literally save your life.
Preventing Burns is Everyone’s Responsibility
Especially for adults, preventing burns around the house and in the workplace is everyone’s responsibility. This communal effort can prevent deaths, life-long injuries, and other tragic accidents from occurring, after all.
