Fire Safety Tip I

There are complex steps to learn, skills to acquire and a lot of detailed information that can equip us to increase safety. There are also very simple things we can do — and often simple preventions stop dangerous situations before they get out of control.

The Defywire movie tip Fire Safety I (click here to see it under February 5, 2007) describes one of the simplest and most powerful ways to keep a family, school or workplace safe: install smoke detectors and maintain them to be sure they are working. As the movie explains, experts say you should install a smoke detector on every level of your home, including the basement. Check your smoke detectors’ batteries at least once a year, for example when you change your clocks for Daylight Savings Time.

Like the Nike folks would say: Just do it!

Stop Disasters! – a training game for the real world

The Stop Disasters! game from International Strategy for Disaster Reduction is serious training. There are games to play in which the player assumes the role of managing each of these types of disaster: wildfire, earthquake, flood, and tsunami. There are different scenarios and levels of difficulty for each type of disaster. The games can be played in English and four other languages.

The games are not appropriate for small children, but middle and high school students can use them to obtain in-depth understanding of how disasters can be minimized when responsible people know what to do. The games are used by professionals who train for real world disaster management. One of the strong educational values of the online world is that it can give students access to professional resources to use in their education. The games are an example of training kids can get as virtual apprentices to real life activities.

The Stop Disasters! games are also good training for school officials and teachers who may one day have to take responsibility in a fire, earthquake, flood — or even a tsunami. Having adults who know what to do increases the safety of students at their school.

How to avoid lead in your child’s lunch box

The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) page on Lead in Children’s Lunch Boxes is informative and links to additional sources of information. Is your child safe from this danger? Among the “Commonly Asked Questions” answered by the CEH is this basic one:

How dangerous are lunchboxes with lead?
The levels CEH found in the lunchboxes are not high enough by themselves to cause acute lead poisoning during normal use. However, with prolonged use or if your child is exposed to lead from other sources, a leaded lunchbox would add to their health risk. Because lead has been shown to cause developmental problem in young children at very low levels, CEH believes it is important to eliminate all controllable sources of lead exposure, including lunchboxes.

New school bus safety standards announced

United States Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters announced today new federal proposed standards to make school buses safer by requiring higher seat backs and setting new seat belt standards for the nation’s 474,000 school buses. Secretary Peters, shown above, said in the announcement: “Our proposed rule would make children safer, put parents at ease and give communities a clearer picture of how to protect students. . . .”

Highlights from the DOT press release:

Beginning one year after the rule goes into effect, all new school buses would be equipped with 24-inch seat backs. This increase, up from the current 20 inches, will better protect child passengers by helping keep older kids and adults from being thrown over seats in a crash, hurting themselves and others, Secretary Peters said.

“Even the smallest changes can make a big difference,” said Administrator Nicole Nason of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “The higher seat backs will help provide children with even greater protection in the event of a crash.”

The proposal also requires all new small buses, which are more prone to roll-over than full-size buses, to be equipped with three-point belts within three years of the new rule taking effect, replacing the current lap-belts-only requirement, Secretary Peters said.

Washington Post on “dangerous school” designation

In an in-depth article posted today, Washington Post Staff Writer Nelson Hernandez examines: ‘No Child’ Data on Violence Skewed: Each State Defines ‘Dangerous School’:

A little-publicized provision of the No Child Left Behind Act requiring states to identify “persistently dangerous schools” is hampered by widespread underreporting of violent incidents and by major differences among the states in defining unsafe campuses, several audits say. Out of about 94,000 schools in the United States, only 46 were designated as persistently dangerous in the past school year.

Safety tips at Grandma’s house

Over the interchanges and through the airports, to Grandma’s house we go this week for Thanksgiving. Two Defywire Safety Tips movies (March 12 and December 18) on this list are reminders that Grandma’s medicines can be dangerous for children:
http://www.defywire.com/100safetytips.html

When you bring her grandchildren to visit her, child proof Grandma’s house just as you do your own. Put away poisons from the cleaning closet and check for other hazards. Ask Grandma to take her medicines out of the view of children, to avoid imitation. If Grandma visits you ask her to bring her medications in child-proof containers.

Recognizing strangers who enter schools

USA Today reports on a new system that will be tested in three Nashville schools beginning December 1st:

Nashville will take digital photos of students and workers at the three test schools and store them in the new camera system. . . . When a camera spots a face in a school that it cannot match to a stored photo, it will alert security. The system also could detect suspended and expelled students and fired employees . . . .

Pros and cons of the system are discussed in the USA Today article. The powerful face recognition technology has been controversial with regard to some privacy issues. In Nashville, where several intruders have entered schools in the past year, a school official quoted in the article says, “This will give us an edge in providing safety for our students and teachers.”

Defywire’s Mobile Guardian complements other safety technologies by providing parents, schools and students the means to focus on what to do in an emergency situation when their safety and security are threatened.

Lead paint in schools Q&A

The good news is, as you will learn in this Q&A, that schools built after 1992 probably do not have a lead paint problem. Schools built before 1978 probably DO have hazardous lead paint. Schools built in the intervening years could or could not — depending on whether they were painted with any of the old stocks of leaded paint that were used up after the 1978 ban on paint containing more than 0.06 percent lead.

Reading through nine questions and answers from the Natural Resources Defense Council will give you more information for discovering if your school has lead paint hazards.

Allstate teams up with Lifehouse to help save the lives of teen drivers

The Allstate Teen Driving program website is a collection of information and guidance for teens, parents and all of us who care about the well being of our teenagers. The images above are from a video in which the popular musicians at Lifehouse perform a song, From Where You Are. The video is dedicated “to teens who have lost their lives in car accidents and to all who love them.”

On the Allstate home webpage for the Teen Driving program you can also click to play the Lifehouse video and also to play an Allstate television commercial in which the video and Lifehouse music comprise the content, with a voice-over reminder at the end that every year nearly 6000 teenagers in the United States “go out for a drive and never come back” — and that just talking with them can make a difference. Guidance for doing so is provided in a section on the program website called: Start the Conversation – Teaching Your Teen to Drive, Talking About Safe Driving.

Safety Tip: Home Playground Safety 1

The Defywire Safety Tip for the first week in November is Home Playground Safety 1. Watching this video tip provides a reminder that playgrounds at home need safety planning, and also need adults who keep a watchful eye on children as they use them.

Live Safe – Play Safe