June is National Safety Month, and it is no accident that it falls during the first month of summer, when more people are active outdoors and traveling. You can join the National Safety Council (NSC) and thousands of other groups across America in observing National Safety Month. This year’s slogan is “No One Gets Hurt.”
You can download free resources from the NSC website for each week’s theme. This year’s weekly topics are:
- Week One: Preparing for Emergencies
- Week Two: Staying Well
- Week Three: Avoiding Falls
- Week Four: Safe Driving
How You Can Get Involved in National Safety Month
You can encourage your co-workers, family members, and people in your community to participate in safety awareness activities like downloading and sharing National Safety Month poster, articles, special offers, safety tip sheets, family activities, and social media graphics. You can also:
- Post safety awareness information on blogs, newsletters, and bulletin boards
- Offer prizes for safety trivia contests
- Hold a safety hazard scavenger hunt at your home or workplace
Hot Topics in Safety Awareness This Year
As society changes, our trending safety issues evolve. The NSC is focusing on many topics currently, including educating the public on the opioid epidemic, increasing workplace safety and preventing motor vehicle crashes.
Tweet Your Way to Sharing Safety Information
It only takes a matter of seconds to send a tweet. One of the ways that the NSC suggests people can help raise awareness of safety tips is through Twitter. You can include links to the NSC online information. Here are some sample tweet ideas to inspire you:
- Check the expiration dates on your medicines and get rid of expired drugs
- Add the poison control number (1-800-222-1222) as a cell phone contact
- Sign up for a fun local first aid class
You Can Help Older Americans Avoid Injuries from Falling
One of the weekly themes of this year’s National Safety Month is preventing falls. You can share a checklist to help spread the word on how to keep this common injury from happening.
Every year, more than 10,000 older Americans die from falls. That number is roughly the same as the number of people killed in drunk driving crashes every year in our country. Many more people have to go to the emergency room for treatment of severe injuries, some debilitating, from falls. A bad fall is often the event that sends a person to the nursing home or puts her in a wheelchair.
The checklist offers you these tips, among others, for making an older loved one’s home safer for them and to help prevent falls:
- Move furniture throughout the house to create a clear path
- Remove throw rugs or install a non-slip backing or double-sided tape
- Pick up papers, books, towels, boxes, blankets, or other objects from the floor
- Design strategies to keep objects off the floor in the future
- Attach electrical cords to the baseboards to prevent tripping
- Fix any loose or uneven steps and keep objects off of the stairs at all times
- Make sure the stairs are well-lit with light switches at the top and bottom
- Install grab bars inside the tub and next to the toilet
- Attach nonslip strips on the floor of the tub or shower
- Plug in light-activated nightlights
At the Montero Law Center, we hope these tips will help keep you and the ones you care about safe. In the unfortunate event that you suffer an injury in an accident that was not your fault, please call us at 954-767-6500 to get your free consultation and to see if you might be entitled to compensation for your damages.