Your home is supposed to be your safe space, but many homes contain one or more hidden health hazards that could have serious health consequences, and sometimes even prove fatal!
If you want your home to be the safe haven, it should be, and you don’t want any nasty surprises, check out this list of common health hazards right now:
Button Batteries
Button batteries – those little round batteries that come in kids’ toys and handheld electronics – are an extremely common fixture in most homes, which is rather worrying considering the not insignificant risk they pose, especially to children who might be tempted to swallow them! In fact, 3,500 people in the United States do swallow these buttons each year, and it can be fatal in some cases, although burns are thankfully more common.
If you have any of these batteries in your home, be sure to store them safely away from little hands and always check that the battery covers of devices using them are secure.
Asbestos
If there is asbestos anywhere on your property, then there is a risk that you could end up developing serious illnesses such as mesothelioma and lung cancer. If you’ve never heard of asbestos before, you can find more information at www.brownandcrouppen.com/mesothelioma-asbestos/mesothelioma, but basically, it is a highly fire-proof material that, for that very reason, was once commonly used in home construction. If you have it in your home and it starts to degrade, if you breathe in the dust, you are in serious danger of becoming ill, especially after repeated exposures.
Detergent Pods
Detergent pods might seem harmless enough, and chances are that you have them in your home, but because the liquid contained within them is so concentrated, it can be dangerous. If for example, your child was to pick up a detergent tablet with wet hands and hold on to it for a while, it would quickly start to degrade. If they were then to put their hands in their mouth or rub their eyes, chemical burns would be a likely result.
Faulty Smoke Detectors
You probably have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in your home, but are they working? Have you checked them recently? If not, go and do it right now. Having detectors that are not working is a very real hazard to your health and could mean the difference between your family surviving a fire or not.
Having a working carbon monoxide detector is perhaps even more important because as you can see from this information on carbon monoxide https://www.cdc.gov/co/faqs.htm, it is an odourless gas that can make you very ill very quickly, and will eventually kill you if left undetected for long enough.
Mold
Mold isn’t just smelly, unsightly and a danger to the fabric of your home – it could have a very serious effect on your health too, Mold when breathed in regularly could worsen asthma, cause chest and throat infections, block the sinuses and cause skin irritation amongst other things, so get it sorted as soon as you spot the early warning signs!