BOB FLOWERDEW
Gardening risks are not worth taking!
NOW as I’m sure you may have gathered I’m hardly ecstatic about some aspects of the current obsession with Health & Safety. I’m more of the “If I choose to take the risk it’s up to me” school of thought.
However, having active children has made me reassess my garden somewhat – and perhaps we all should do likewise. No one wants an accident, after all. So what are the biggest gardening risks to life? Surprisingly it’s not eating poisonous plants or berries, or even mushrooms. Indeed according to official records for the UK there have been no accidental deaths (more than a couple of suspicious ones though) attributed to those since the Second World War, and not many more if any since the First World War.
Sadly deaths can and do occur from children drinking garden and household products, especially when these are most inadvisably in wrong containers as well as being foolishly accessible.
Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful and warn our children of the dangers of eating or drinking things we have not expressly given them. No, but what we need to guard against is our stupidity of leaving potentially dangerous things in too easily findable places. Even though I’m an organic gardener but I still have petrol, oils, paints, thinners, turpentine and methylated spirits, and in the house bleaches, cleaners and detergents in profusion (my wife runs a clean ship). Statistically these really were much more of a threat.
Oddly, stepladders are the other risky threat – a huge number of accidents involve these, with ladders and boxes balanced on top of pallets etcetera.
Then there is electricity, another dangerous thing that curious fingers can get harmed by. I’ve had a fast acting circuit breaker fitted for the outside sockets… which just might save me as well as the kids.
“What are the biggest risks?”