Keep food safe in your kitchen with these tips

(ARA) – How safe is your kitchen?  It’s a question you should always be asking yourself. The majority of Americans find food safety important both at restaurants and in their own kitchen, according to new National Restaurant Association research.  America’s restaurants serve 130 million customers each day, making the restaurant industry a critical component of the food safety universe.  The industry has a long-standing commitment to food safety as there is nothing more important than the health and safety of guests.  Almost all consumers say it is important to them to know that the restaurants they visit train employees in food safety. When it comes to cooking at home, virtually all consumers say they have at least basic knowledge of food safety.  Sixty-three percent say they are aware of proper food safety practices and always follow them, while 33 percent say they are familiar with some food safety practices and follow those when they can. In order to prevent food borne illness, avoiding cross-contamination is essential.  When cooking at home, remember to follow these tips from food safety experts at the National Restaurant Association: 1.  Wash your hands: Hand-washing is the first defense against cross-contamination.  Wash your hands before handling any food and always after handling raw meat. 2.  Touch nothing but your food:  Don’t rub your nose, touch your hair or cough into your hand while preparing food, as germs from anything you touch can be transferred onto food. 3.  Keep foods apart:  Don’t store raw meats next to or above ready-to-eat food in your fridge and use different utensils, knives, cutting boards and prep surfaces for raw and cooked food.  A good way to remember which is which is to use different colored cutting boards, for example red for meats and green for vegetables. 4.  Treat friends with food allergies to a safe meal:  Take extra care to prep dishes for guests with food allergies, as it’s not enough to simply pick the item in question off a dish.  Prepare the dish separately from other food, including using separate cutting boards and utensils. September is National Food Safety Month, with an annual campaign to heighten awareness about the importance of food safety education. This year’s National Food Safety Month theme is “Be Safe, Don’t Cross-Contaminate,” providing tips and education on preventing the transferring of germs from one surface to another. National Food Safety Month highlights components of the NRA’s ServSafe Food Safety program – the leading source of food safety training and certification for restaurant and food service industry professionals for nearly 40 years. While the campaign is held each September, remember that food safety is critical year-round and should be practiced every day.  For more information and free resources, visit FoodSafetyMonth.com.

(ARA) – Your home- it’s your castle, your sanctuary.  But could the place you go to escape the rest of the world be bad for you?  Formaldehyde, chloroform and even asbestos could be in your home and you may not even know it. First, the good news,  “Today we’re designing houses that are green-friendly,” says Dan Lee, Interior Design instructor at The Art Institute of Dallas, a campus of South University, and the president of Lee Design Group. “Materials today have fewer chemicals and less carcinogenic substances.” But if you’re in an older house or did some remodeling or refurbishing on your own, there could be substances in your home that are bad for your health.  “There’s something called volatile organic compounds or VOCs,” says Kathleen Wakefield, Interior Design and Design & Technical Graphics program coordinator at The Art Institute of San Antonio, a branch of The Art Institute of Houston.  She adds, “They are emitted from certain solids and liquids like paint.” Wakefield says that short-term exposure to VOCs can cause nausea and irritation to the eyes, while long-term exposure could damage your kidneys and liver.  VOCs are also emitted from carpet foam made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC).  So Wakefield suggests that if you’r putting down carpet you stay elsewhere for a few weeks while the chemicals are being released,  And keep windows open if possible to air out the space more quickly and not trap the compounds in your home. Lee suggests you avoid carpet altogether. “Go with wood or natural stone floors over carpets and make sure you’re shopping for PVC-free floors,” he says. When adding a little color to your home, look for paints with low or no VOC emissions.  It should be right on the label.  According to Wakefield, federal limits for flat paint are 250 milligrams per liter, and 380 milligrams per liter for all other kinds,  California standards are more stringent – 100 milligrams per liter for flat paint and 150 milligrams per liter for all others. If you’re building your home from the ground up, consider using copper plumbing.  “Builders have gotten away from copper and switched to PVC,” says Lee, “but copper is a natural sterilizer.  If water sits in copper, it’s being sterilized.  In PVC, it’s growing something.” If your home was built in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s, the press board used could contain formaldehyde, explains Lee.  And the plastic laminate in those homes was almost always glued and manufactutred with formaldehyde as well.  And if your home was built before the ’60s, the floor and wall coverings may contain asbestos gluing agents. If you’re careful about the materials you’re using in your home building and remodeling projects, make sure that caution extends to the household products you bring into your house as well, says Lee.  Many fabirc softeners actually contain chloroform, benzyl acetate and pentane,  These are cancer-causing agents, warns Lee.  Also, make sure you’re using natural pesticides in the yard as well. Wakefield advises researching products on the internet before you go out and buy them.  She also advises hiring an interior designer that specializes in environmental and sustainable design for any home improvement and renovation projects you undertake.

 

The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a Florida-based research group, released a new study this week that ranked 18 states along the Atlantic coast in order of how prepared their residents' homes are for hurricane season.

On a 100-point grading scale, the results of the study showed many factors are at play when it comes to determining what states are at the greatest risk for catastrophe beyond their geographic location.

A large focus of the study was to take into consideration current building codes and licensing standards enforced in each state.

The study ranked (want to keep tenses consistent, you've used past tense for all the study references prior to this) Maryland 10th among the 18 states with a score of 73. Though Maryland has adopted a statewide Residential Building Code, municipalities still reserve the right to amend the code according to the study, which was a big reason researchers said Maryland didn't receive a higher score.  according to the Institutes Disaster Safety Review.

Two states that border Maryland placed on opposite ends of the list. Virginia, which borders Maryland to the south, tied for first with Florida in the study, while Delaware, which neighbors Maryland to the East, was second to last on the list with a grade of 17.

Mississippi residents were the least prepared for hurricane season. The study gave the state a grade of 4 out of 100. Researchers found that despite being hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, residential building codes in Mississippi lack almost all uniformity, and standards of quality for new home construction cannot be guaranteed.

Even those living in states that scored poorly still have the opportunity to protect their homes in the event of catastrophic weather. In Maryland and Virgina,  a visit from home inspection contractors like those at Alban Inspections can determine your home's weak-spots and inform you of the steps you need to take to fix them.
 

Homeownership has been perhaps the most widely accepted tenet of the American Dream for more than 50 years. Throughout the 1990s especially, homeownership rates spiked as suburbs sprawled outward from urban centers and the footprint of Americans extended into previously undeveloped areas.

But, for all the advantages provided by suburban living and its considerable popularity, why did a Gallup poll find last month that homeownership rates have plunged to a record low of 62 percent?

"Why are the giants of the building industry, the creators for decades of massive communities of cookie-cutter homes, cul-de-sacs and McMansions in far-flung suburbs, doing an about-face?" asks a May 15 USA Today analysis on the changing housing market. "Why are they suddenly building smaller neighborhoods in and close to cities on land more likely to be near a train station than a pig farm?"

This seismic shift in homeownership habits can be traced back to a variety of factors that arose in the last five years, including the bursting of the housing bubble, spiking gas prices that made extended commutes much more expensive and a general paradigm shift among Americans who are more conscious of their consumption habits.

As part of this change, consumers are increasingly coming to expect home energy efficiency when they build new properties or move into existing houses. Products like energy-efficient heating and insulation can trim a homeowner's monthly utility bill, while a comprehensive emphasis on energy efficiency in multiple aspects of the home can reduce consumption costs considerably.

To begin benefiting from energy improvements, consumers in the Tri-State area should not hesitate to contact an accredited Washington, D.C. home inspector. Once an energy audit is complete, the inspector will be able to tell a homeowner the best ways to begin saving money immediately.

It's no secret in the real estate industry that home energy efficiency is usually most critical for newly built properties, not for existing homes. The reasons for this are mostly cost related, as just last week, this blog reported that new homes can cost significantly more than used properties. In short, buyers do not mind funding energy efficiency if they're already paying a premium for a home, but many others are less willing to take the plunge when it comes to existing properties.

At the time of sale, buyers will often request a home inspection in order to find structural problems with a property or other maladies, such as mold, that could cost the buyer a significant amount of money to repair. Still, energy audits have been shown to be profitable for both buyers and sellers alike.

Boston real estate broker Leland DiMeco told The Washington Post that an energy audit he recently insisted upon ended up netting sellers an extra $50,000 that they had not originally anticipated, after they fixed many of the home's energy efficiency problems. Buyers were willing to pay a premium because the sellers were upfront and transparent about changes they had made before putting the home on the market.

"[An] audit might save the buyer thousands of dollars in future operating costs by pinpointing features of the house that need correction to improve efficiency," according to the newspaper. "It might also be a tip-off to a sobering reality: This house is an energy guzzler. And that might prompt the buyer to say: Either the asking price comes down, the seller fixes the problems, or I walk."

Homeowners will ultimately need to determine whether an energy audit is worth the cost, and should they decide to do so, their real estate agent should know of an experienced D.C. home inspector working in the area who has experience with energy audits.

Would you ever purchase a car without insisting that a professional mechanic thoroughly inspect the vehicle's engine, brakes and other key components? Most would insist upon an inspection, so why shouldn't homes be treated the same way before they are bought?

We devote much of this blog's reporting to home energy issues, primarily because of the money homeowners can save if they use an energy audit to find problem areas in their dwellings. Long before a consumer ever settles down in a new home, though, a home inspection could save him or her even more money by revealing potentially costly repairs before the ink has dried on a purchase agreement and left them responsible for fixing these problems.

A home inspection by a qualified Washington, D.C. home inspector can also go a long way toward ensuring buyers are comfortable with their purchases, especially if these properties are distressed. The American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) recently commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a poll on this very topic, and the results were overwhelming slanted in one direction.

About 84 percent of consumers who responded to the survey said that they considered home inspections to be a necessary component of the purchasing process, not an optional luxury. Similarly, 88 percent said that a home inspection makes them more confident about a property purchase, which is even more critical given the depressed state of home sales over the last few years.

"It is encouraging to learn having a home inspection increases homebuyer confidence," said ASHI president Marvin Goldstein said in a press release. "We look forward to prospective buyers acting on the security brought by home inspections to breathe even more life into the recovering housing market."

Whether you already own a home or you are considering purchasing one, do not forget to contact a certified home inspector in the Tri-State area well in advance of a sale.