Household safety is serious business, and very few places pose more personal injury risks than your bathroom. It’s estimated that more than 50% of all personal injuries take place in your own home, and about two-thirds of those inside your bathroom.
For starters, the combination of water, medications and electrical appliances make safety precautions in and around the bathroom essential for every family member. Safe storage of supplies, constant adult supervision around water and swift cleaning of slick surfaces should be common practice to help reduce the risk of injury.
But before you head off to the nearest home centre with a list of bath safety items to be purchased, take inventory of every health and safety risk you can identify. For example:
- Are electrical outlets in the bathroom connected to a safety switch or residual current device that cuts off the power source when shorted? This is in addition to your existing circuit breakers.
- Are your bath and shower equipped with non-skid surfaces?
- Do you use liquid soap instead of a cake of soap to prevent falls in the bath or shower?
- Do you have a phone in and/or near the bathroom in case of emergencies?
- Is there a motion sensitive night light in the bathroom to reduce the risk of injury at night?
How to Improve Bathroom Safety
From our house to yours, here are several ways to prevent or eliminate bathroom injuries.
- Toilet safety frames include grab bars, provide anti-slip protection, and can be mounted to the floor or wall.
- Grab bars can be attached anywhere to help prevent slipping and falling, especially where moisture accumulates on the floor. Bath or shower rails, another type of grab bar, facilitate greater ease of entry and exit.
- Bath benches feature multiple positions – plus angled legs with suction tips for additional stability – along with drainage holes to reduce slipping.
- Hand-held shower heads allow water to follow the person. Many models also come with instant “on” and “off” switches and hand-held temperature control.
- Walk-in baths – allow absolute ease of entry and exit into the bathtub or shower…they also come with water-tight doors…you can even add jets for bath-time therapeutic massages.
There’s much more we can tell you, and a great deal we can do to help ensure your bathroom is the safest possible environment for guests and family members alike. Contact Swan’s Complete Plumbing today for the information or service you need.
