June is National Safety & Home Safety Month
Every year the National Safety Council promotes June as National Safety Month, an initiative that focuses on heightening awareness of important safety issues. NSC asks employers to help prevent workplace injuries and individuals to protect their loved ones from injury all year but uses the month to especially focus the message. Companies and organizations can become sponsors of different outreach efforts and involved in different ways.
NSC's Web site, www.nsc.org/nsm offers resources in both English and Spanish to support each of its weekly themes for June 2009, which include teen driving (June 1-7), fall prevention (June 8-14), overexertion (June 15-21), and distracted driving (June 22-28).
Also every year, the Home Safety Council earmarks June as Home Safety Month, promoting off-the-job safety by offering a plethora of free, ready-made online and hardcopy homes safety resources such as posters, brochures, articles, and lesson plans. This year's campaign theme for the month--Hands-on Home Safety--asks the public to take some simple steps to create a safer home environment from the five leading causes of home injury: falls, poisonings, fires and burns, choking/suffocation, and drowning. Again, companies and organizations are encouraged to get involved. Visit www.homesafetycouncil.org for information.
In addition, because summer is the peak season for one of the nation's deadliest weather phenomena--lightning--the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has set up a Lightning Safety Web page at www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/ and is calling attention to Lightning Safety Week (June 21-27) by posting a number of new resources to increase safety awareness. Included among the site's offerings is a brochure titled "Lightning Safety for You and Your Family" and a lightning safety quiz for kids, featuring Leon the Lightning Lion. According to NOAA, an average of 62 people are killed by lightning in the United States each year and hundreds more are injured by it.