Urban safety myths

• Is it dangerous to talk on the phone or take a shower during a thunderstorm?

  When lightning strikes, the resulting electrical surge will travel along any convenient pathway until it finally grounds out, which is how nearly 1,000 people in the United States find themselves part of the electrical circuit each year.

  "When lightning is striking around you, even if you're indoors, you need to take precautions," said John Drengenberg, Consumer Affairs Director for UL. a global safety organization. "Stay away from windows and doors, avoid contact with plumbing, electrical equipment and cords, and don't use corded telephones except for emergencies."

  Lightning strikes the United States as many as 20 million times each year, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI) and the Lightning Protection Institute.

  In buildings, wires and pipes provide a convenient pathway for lightning's electrical surge.

  If the surge flows through the water pipes while you're underneath the showerhead, in a puddle no less, you could get a frightening, painful and sometimes fatal jolt. The same holds true if you're taking a bath or washing dishes in the sink.

  If you're on the phone - and we're talking landline here - the electrical surge could race along the wire from the phone's base to the handset. Cordless or cellular phones do not pose the risk landlines do because there is no cord attached to the base. However, they are not risk free.

  "Can you be struck by lightning while talking on a cell phone? Of course you can, but it has nothing to do with the phone," said Douglas "Bud" Weiser, founder of the Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Association. "During a lightning storm you need to get inside where it's safe."

  When lightning strikes, the resulting electrical surge will travel along any convenient pathway until it finally grounds out, which is how nearly 1,000 people in the United States find themselves part of the electrical circuit each year.

  "When lightning is striking around you, even if you're indoors, you need to take precautions," said John Drengenberg, Consumer Affairs Director for UL. a global safety organization. "Stay away from windows and doors, avoid contact with plumbing, electrical equipment and cords, and don't use corded telephones except for emergencies."

  Lightning strikes the United States as many as 20 million times each year, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI) and the Lightning Protection Institute.

  In buildings, wires and pipes provide a convenient pathway for lightning's electrical surge.

  If the surge flows through the water pipes while you're underneath the showerhead, in a puddle no less, you could get a frightening, painful and sometimes fatal jolt. The same holds true if you're taking a bath or washing dishes in the sink.

  If you're on the phone - and we're talking landline here - the electrical surge could race along the wire from the phone's base to the handset. Cordless or cellular phones do not pose the risk landlines do because there is no cord attached to the base. However, they are not risk free.

  "Can you be struck by lightning while talking on a cell phone? Of course you can, but it has nothing to do with the phone," said Douglas "Bud" Weiser, founder of the Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Association. "During a lightning storm you need to get inside where it's safe."

  Related materials

  • Audio (mp3): Talking on phones during storms

• Can you open a door with a credit card?

  "Burglars are not picking locks anymore, they're kicking in doors," said Marty Arnold, a locksmith for more than four decades and treasurer of the Greater Philadelphia Locksmiths Association. "Homeowners should place more emphasis on the doorframe."

  Locks installed improperly, or installed in doorframes designed for decoration rather than sturdiness, will yield after two good kicks from an intruder. The better option is to reinforce deadbolt strike plates and use screws that are long enough to reach the studs surrounding the doorframe, at least 3 inches.

  To be certain your locks and deadbolts offer the security you want, Arnold says to call a locksmith. Most offer security surveys at no charge.

  On the commercial and industrial side, the emphasis is on making locks drill-resistant rather than kick-proof. Frank Mullozzi, a technician who tests locks for UL, a global safety organization, said his team tries to pick locks or drill through them within a reasonable amount of time. A jail door lock, for instance, needs to be drill-resistant for at least 5 minutes — the amount of time a jailbreak would get, under lucky conditions.

  But keeping people out, or in, is only one function of locks that UL tests. Office door locks must also be heat-resistant enough to keep from melting during a fire and hindering fire department access, and emergency exit push-bar locks need to work consistently over time and with just the right amount pressure to let out people who, for example, are handicapped.

  Most consumers will not have such high-performance locks in their homes. For one thing, these types of locks are very expensive. No matter. Experts say one of the best ways to protect your home is free.

  "The best security is knowing your neighbors and having them know you," Mullozzi said. "Then you'll know if strangers are lurking around the neighborhood."

• Safecrackers use a stethoscope

  The key to opening a safe without the combination is in the hands, not the ears.

  "Do I wear a stethoscope to safe jobs? Sure, but it's only a showpiece," says Marty Arnold, treasurer of the Greater Philadelphia Locksmiths Association. "People expect to see one."

  Fifty years ago, locks might have made enough noise for safecrackers to listen their way through a job, according to Arnold, but modern locks are designed to fool the ear.

  "Today's locks don't make the right noise in the right places, or are designed to make so much noise you can't tell when you get the right combination," says Frank Mullozzi, a member of the UL safecracking team that has a combined experience of more than 50 years testing safes.

  Most safes use combination locks with one- to four-number combinations. Combination numbers correspond to wheels, or tumblers, in the lock. Each tumbler has an opening, or a gate. When combination numbers are dialed in the proper directions, the gates line up and the lock will open.

  The larger the number of combinations, the greater the security — and the greater the need to write down the combination.

  To bypass these safeguards, you need to know how many tumblers there are in the combination lock. This is tough, since the only ways to find out are by listening for the tumblers to touch each other when the dial is spun, or by drilling a hole through the door and using a scope to view them.

  After the number of tumblers is determined, those educated in the art of lock manipulation can narrow down the dialing sequence and crack the combination — with enough time. Not surprisingly, then, lock manipulation is too time-consuming for some safecrackers.

  "With the 'bad guys,' time is the enemy," Mullozzi adds. "The more time they take, the greater the chance they have at getting caught."

  Ensuring that a safe cannot be drilled or sawed open in a reasonable amount of time is the duty of the safe-testing division at UL, a global safety organization that has been testing and rating safes since 1938. It also tests vaults and ATMs.

  UL is the only organization outside of the U.S. government to conduct these kinds of tests, and its ratings for safes are used by insurance companies as a benchmark for the level of security required at banks and jewelry stores.

  Mullozzi says he and two partners use tools most commonly employed by burglars, according to information provided by police departments, insurance companies and safe manufacturers. They also scan the blueprints of safes before starting.

  "It's a worst-case scenario," Mullozzi says. "We have inside information because we assume that the burglars also have inside information."

  In every test, UL's safecrackers try to pry open the safe door. They also attempt to create an opening large enough to pull out the money or jewelry. On vaults, the minimum size hole is 16 inches, enough for a tiny person to crawl through.

  Additionally, the UL team uses lock manipulation to test the combination locks on safes. For instance, if the lock of a high-security safe is opened within 20 hours, it fails.

  Overall, UL has a dozen different ratings for safes, depending on what the safes are used for and what they are protecting. ATMs, gun safes, jewelry safes and bank vaults all have their own specific ratings for resistance to burglary. The tests range from five minutes of assault with tools from around the house to an hour of abuse that includes the discharge of 8 ounces of nitroglycerin.

  Another division in UL rates safes for fire-resistance. Currently, UL has three different ratings for fire-resistance in safes: protecting paper documents, protecting magnetic tape and photographic film, and protecting floppy disks.

• Dryer lint is no big deal

  "Lint is the bane of our existence," says Brian Wallace, president of the Coin Laundry Association. "We can't afford not to clean lint, not only as a safety issue, but to keep our energy costs down and ensure proper performance."

  At coin-operated laundries, dryers are key to customer satisfaction. Other amenities pale if clothes aren't drying fast enough, which is why laundry owners are adamant about maintaining proper air flow through their commercial dryers. With 30 to 50 dryers at the average laundry, operators clear trashcan amounts of lint everyday from their screens.

  The same principle applies at home, although on a smaller scale.

  "Cleaning the lint filter after every cycle is one habit we want to encourage," says Jill Notini, communications and marketing director for the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM). "Repetition builds a habit."

  AHAM urges consumers to clean the lint filter after each load and occasionally remove the filter and clean it with a nylon brush and hot, soapy water to remove residue. This simple chore not only improves air flow and energy efficiency, but it also reduces the chance of a dryer fire.

  Statistics on dryer fires show no difference between the natural gas and electric dryers, according to John Drengenberg, UL's Director of Consumer Affairs.

  "If you forget to clean the lint screen too many times you're going to get a buildup, and that's where ultimately you could have a problem," Drengenberg says.

  Manufacturers whose products carry the UL mark are required to ship their dryers with safety instructions that specify cleaning the lint screen before or after each load. These instructions also recommend keeping dryer exhaust openings and adjacent surrounding areas free from accumulated lint, dust and dirt, and having qualified service people periodically clean the dryer's interior and exhaust duct.

  Without adequate air circulation, heat flow is stymied, clothes take longer to dry and it costs more to operate the appliance.

  Like the oven and stove, dryers use extreme heat on potentially flammable materials.

  "You wouldn't leave cooking unattended for long periods of time — at least you shouldn't, for safety and edibility," Drengenberg says, "but dryers run up to an hour or more, forgotten in a basement, garage or utility space."

  This out-of-sight/out-of-mind practice makes it essential that the dryer be maintained on a simple and regular basis.

  Another good piece of advice — keep the following out of the dryer:

  • Anything that has ever had any type of oil or other flammable liquid on it, such as cooking oil, alcohol, gasoline, spot remover and dry cleaning solvent. No washer can completely remove these liquids and they can ignite or explode in the dryer. These items should be dried outdoors or in a well-ventilated room away from heat.
  • Items made of foam, rubber, plastic or other heat-sensitive fabrics, such as bathroom rugs or non-slip mats. Dry them on a line or in an air-only dryer cycle where there is no heat. Follow the care label instructions.
  • Glass fiber materials, unless permitted by a manufacturer's instructions.

  Related materials

  • Audio (mp3): Using your clothes dryer safely

  • Graph: Using your clothes dryer safely

   

• Always turn off the lights

  There are times when leaving on a light, like a porch light, provides safety and security, which are worth a few extra pennies, but leaving the lights on because turning them off and on again burns out the bulb is false, according to the American Lighting Association.

  "Incandescent lighting is not affected by the number of times a light is turned on and off," says Joseph Ray-Barreau with the American Lighting Association.

  The life of fluorescent lighting, on the other hand, is shorted by contrast flicks of the switch, but Ray-Barreau says the life of a fluorescent bulb is so large to begin with that the shortened lifespan caused by turning it on and off excessively is barely noticeable."

  If you like to leave the home lights burning for added security when returning after dark, John Drengenberg, UL's Director of Consumer Affairs, says a few precautions can prevent a fire.

  "If it's a UL-Listed light fixture and you're using the right bulb, and you don't have it too close to combustibles like drapes or newspapers, you shouldn't have any problem," says Drengenberg.

  Lamps and other light fixtures tested by UL engineers have no time limit in mind. Also, American homes must comply with standards set under the National Electrical Code. In the event there was a problem, the home's circuit breakers would cut off power.

  Even a very small disturbance in the flow of electrical current will cause a breaker to turn off the circuit, thereby preventing any fire hazard.

  Risk increases when lighting fixtures are "overlamped," Drengenberg says.

  Overlamping is simply using a bulb with a wattage higher than what the lamp calls for, such as a 75-watt bulb in a 40-watt socket.

  But just because you can leave your lights on, doesn't mean you should.

  "It's wasteful to leave your lights on when you're not using them. It wastes our finite energy resources and it hurts our environment," says Wendy Reed, communications manager for the Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR program. "Our homes don't have tailpipes, but there's a power plant not too far away burning coal or oil to bring us electricity."

  To conserve energy, ENERGY STAR recommends switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), which provide the same amount of light as incandescent bulbs, but at a lower wattage. CFLs cost more than incandescents, but they last much longer.

  If every home replaced one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified CFL, the EPA says it would prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing 1 million cars from the road.