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Show Accident- Rate Key to Your Home Safety Index Are you a good housekeeper? One way to answer the question ques-tion objectively, that is is to count up the number of accidents you've had in your home in the last year. If you went accident free then you probably keep a pretty neat place. If you had a couple of serious accidents, then there's probably room for improvement. According to the Utah Safety Council, good housekeeping and safety go hand in hand. "Good housekeeping can help reduce the number of falls. Keep roadblocks such as stools, toys, and hassocks, for example, out of traffic lanes. You'll have far fewer falls." Other Council suggestions: sug-gestions: Dont leave medicine and potential po-tential poisons around where the children can get at them. Keep your home neat and clean but don't overdo things. A floor too highly polished is an invitation to a fall." Perhaps you've heard that falls are the No. 2 accidental killer, ranking right behind motor ve-heicle ve-heicle accidents. Think you can identify the next most frequent cause of accidental ac-cidental death? It may come as a surprise, but, according to the Council, the main cause of non-motor vehicle death to persons in the "active" years 5-44 years of age is drowning. Drowning deaths result not only from swimming accidents, but from falls into the water when working or playing near it, and from boating mishaps. More than 6,000 persons of all ages die each year from drowning. drown-ing. (Two Utah men drowned in Utah lake this wek when their boat was swamped.) It's not surprising, either, that the number of drownings is the highest during the warm months June, July and August and May, in that order, but an average aver-age of more than 525 persons a month die of drowning, ranging from a July high of almost 1500 deaths to a February low of 160. |