Living Safely, Aging Well

December 2, 2013
As safety expert Drago wisely points out, “how safe a person is depends on how he or she functions in and interacts with the immediate environment.” In her latest book, Drago (From Crib to Kindergarten: The Essential Child Safety Guide) discusses aging, its associated injury risk, and offers avoidance strategies. She explains physical changes in vision, hearing, balance, smell, taste, touch, and the awareness of core body temperature, as well as cognitive changes, including age-related dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Having described the frailties of the characters, Drago then describes the places that are most dangerous—kitchen, bedroom, workshop, car—and counsels readers on the risks, both single and synergistic with age-related changes, that each holds for falls, burns, asphyxiation, poisoning, or accident. Finally, the author provides an extensive set of illustrations showing how to mitigate risk and prevent injury, lists of “what to do,” and contact information for outside agencies and organizations, such as the AARP. This is a wonderful resource for anyone thinking about how to increase the safety of the home to allow for independence as people live longer. 27 b&w illus.

February 1, 2014

The author, owner of a product safety evaluation company, has not written a fun book. From start to finish, this title dutifully and humorlessly relates all the bad things that can happen to us as we get older and all the grimly practical things we can do to avoid harming ourselves too badly as a result. There is an enormous amount of obvious advice here. If you are over 75, then your eyes/ears/nose/mind and/or sense of touch/smell/balance are weak. So don't light a cigarette near the oxygen tank. Don't use slippery scatter rugs. Don't leave loaded guns lying around. Don't drive. Don't wander near the pool alone. Eat right. Put a safety bar in the shower. Occasionally, the advice is less obvious. Not everyone knows that when electricity goes out, frozen food is good for 24 hours if the freezer is half full; 48 hours if full. Ditto the idea that one should wait a full ten minutes after leaving one's oxygen tank before lighting up that smoke, as flammable oxygen clings to clothes. VERDICT This is certainly a practical book, but much more effort could have gone into making it a readable one.--Cynthia Fox, Brooklyn

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