Household chemical safety tips: Keeping chemicals out of reach

A brief discussion of the hazards in keeping household chemicals where children can reach them, and how to secure household chemicals
The modern American house contains all sorts of chemicals. These are kept in the home to accomplish or make easier all sorts of tasks: killing pests, cleaning, sterilizing, or to simply freshen up a room. However, all these chemicals have properties that can also prove hazardous if not used with proper caution. For adults, it is usually safe to assume that they know what proper precautions are, and how to follow them. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of children, or even teens.

Even a child who knows a chemical or cleanser is dangerous can still cause themselves and others injury simply by being ignorant of chemical properties. Every year there is usually one story of some enterprising individual, often a child in their early teens, but sometimes even an adult, who has mixed ammonia with bleach in an effort to get a better cleanser by mixing two excellent cleaners. When the resulting mix being foaming and putting out toxic fumes they are very unpleasantly surprised. Even people who know better have been known to make this particular mistake, by assuming that some cleaner is not based on one of those two chemicals, and not checking the ingredients list.

Because of the hazard involved with most household chemicals it is prudent to keep them out of reach of children, and even teens. Several solutions are available. The simplest solution, which only works with babies, and very young toddlers, is to simply keep all such chemicals out of reach in high cabinets or shelves. However, anyone who has tried to keep a cookie jar out of reach of a toddler can tell you that the little darlings are more ingenious than they are ever given credit for being. This however really only gives new parents a few years, two or three at most, to determine how they want to handle hazardous chemicals in the house.

Perhaps the ideal solution is to set up a hazmat/flammable locker in the garage or basement. This would be an enclosed shelving unit, with doors that can be locked shut, either using a hasp and padlock, or with an internal locking mechanism. The shelves would be lipped, to collect any spillage, and metal themselves. Such a locker could keep painting supplies as well as cleaning supplies in relative safety. Some care would have to be taken loading the locker to keep chemicals which might mix to produce fumes or self-igniting mixtures from being able to mix, but with four or five shelves to choose from this is rarely a concern. Unfortunately, such lockers are not gotten cheaply, and even so they tend to take up space that home owners often feel could be better used.

The next best solution is to make use of a series of locked (or at least child-locked) cabinets. Commonly the cabinet under the kitchen sink is chosen for a receptacle for house the majority of household cleaning supplies, since so many of them will end up being used in the kitchen. Again, some care should be taken to make certain that nothing stored in this cabinet will cause direct hazards if they were to mix, such as storing ammonia next to the bleach. My personal solution would be to put the bleach and bleach containing cleansers in a separate cabinet (I’ll mention which in just a moment.) and keep the ammonia based cleansers under the kitchen sink. The other thing to be sure of is that nothing stored under any sink is a chemical that will react poorly to being wetted. For the other cabinet of cleansers the cabinet under the bathroom sink is another common storage spot, and seems a logical place to keep any bleach or bleach based products.

As for locking up these cabinets, the most secure means of locking them would be to use a hasp and padlock. (Combination locks are ideal, since you’ll never be able to forget to bring the key with you when you come to get a cleanser, and you don’t have to worry about leaving the key lying around where your children can get it to see what’s in the locked cabinets.) If this doesn’t appeal to you, ether aesthetically, or as a practical concern, there are several styles of child locks available on the market to make opening a door difficult for the child who hasn’t figured out the trick to it. The problem with these, however is that they are no security against teens – and teenagers have a distressing habit of wanting to do intentionally stupid things ‘to see what will happen.’ For this reason the padlock and hasp seems the best idea to me.

Finally a third cabinet should be used for paints, as well, but these are less of a hazard with small children, since, unlike the cleansers, they are not used constantly in front of the child.

Once both the cleanser cabinets have been set up and made secure, all household cleaners and other chemicals (aside from paints and paint thinners) should be kept in one of the two cabinets. And keeping them there will keep them out of the hands of children who might otherwise cause themselves, or someone else, an injury.