Health and Safety Tips

Simple tips that will help keep you healthier and safer in life

Although we cannot expect to live our lives sickness and accident free, we can do our part to minimize the possibility of being involved in an accident or contracting an illness.

Here are a few simple tips that could end up literally saving your health - if not your life:

Do Not Sign Your Name with the Doctor’s Pen. When you approach the window in the doctor’s office, do you pick up the pen lying beside the sign-in sheet to write your name down? Have you ever considered how many germs might be covering that pen (note: you’re in a doctor’s office where sick people visit)? Next time, bring your own pen to write your name and fill out forms.

Do Not Drink Water from the "Hot" Tap. Do you use "hot" tap water to gargle, or to make hot drinks, to mix your baby’s cereal, or for use in recipes that call for hot water? Have you ever considered what the inside of a hot water heater might look like? It’s not a pretty picture. There are metals inside a hot water heater that corrode over time and also lead from pipes and soldering in your home’s system that dissolve in hot water quicker than in cold water. Also, the bottom of the water heater is a breeding ground for bacteria. So, there is danger of lead poisoning and also bacterial contamination. If you need hot water, always use cold tap water and heat it either on the stove or in the microwave.

Look Before Driving Through Intersection. If you are the driver in the first vehicle sitting at a red traffic light, what do you do when the light turns green? Do you step on the gas and zoom through the intersection or do you look both ways before entering the "danger" zone? Each year there are over 1,000 deaths and 90,000 injuries in the United States caused by vehicles running red lights and thus ramming into that first car edging its way through the intersection. If you are the first vehicle at a red light, always look both ways before crossing the intersection.

Look Both Ways Before Crossing Street. Certainly we were always told to look both ways before crossing, but what if the "walk" sign is giving you the okay to cross - and what if you are standing on the sidewalk of a one-way street? Just as we read of the danger of red-light runners in the previous tip, the same is true for pedestrians. Never assume the traffic is stopped because the sign indicates "walk." Also, it is possible for a vehicle to travel down the wrong way on a one-way street. Never assume traffic is only traveling in one direction - even on a one-way street. Like our parents always told us - look both ways before crossing the street.

You can’t go wrong following these simple health and safety tips. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."