There's no place like home when it comes to having a place to underscore our sense of security and safety. But a recently released study finds that aside from motor vehicle accidents, home is the most common location of fatal accidents.

The Home Safety Council, a not-for-profit organization created by Lowe's, focuses on the prevention and education of home injuries.

The State of Home Safety in America report is the Home Safety Council's statistical report of unintentional home injuries in the United States, including causes, costs and victims. The Home Safety Council worked in conjunction with the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center to create a comprehensive benchmark of the current status of home safety in the minds and homes of Americans.

The report said there are 20,000 home fatalities each year and 20 million medical visits due to unintentional home injuries. Falls are the most common injury, followed by poisonings, fires, inhalations, and suffocation and drowning.

"The tragedy is made worse by the fact that the vast majority of injuries in the home are entirely preventable," said David Oliver, president and executive director of the Home Safety Council. "Our findings make it clear that for most people the problem is invisible. They don mosquito repellant to guard against the well-publicized West Nile Virus, while failing to realize that falls and fires at home pose a far greater risk of death."

To compile the report the research center analyzed existing data from death certificates, emergency departments and clinic record and other safety studies that involve injuries in the home.

And the Council says the problem likely goes much deeper than the numbers. For example, the numbers don't reflect the number of home injuries that might be included in the more than one-third of non-transportation injury deaths for which location was never recorded.

Meanwhile, the study finds that the state with the least number of home-related deaths is Massachusetts, followed by Utah, Maryland, Minnesota, and New York.

Which state has the dubious distinction of the most home-related injuries? New Mexico. The other top danger-prone states are District of Columbia, Arizona, Mississippi, and Wisconsin.

The report says that further research is needed to come up with an explanation of why some states are home to more accidental deaths and injuries at home than others.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says falls in the home are especially prevalent among Americans 65 and older. In fact, one in three in that age range suffers a fall each year. And about 20 to 30 percent of those people experience moderate to severe injuries.

And half of those falls occur at home, the CDC says. The CDC offers these tips for decreasing the risk of older Americans falling at home:

Published: October 1, 2002

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