Preventing tap water scalds: do consumers change their preset thermostats.
S L Webne and
B J Kaplan
Calgary General Hospital, Alberta, Canada.
One goal of the regulatory approach to tap water scald preventionis the installation of hot water heaters at thermostat settingsconsidered safe. In this strategy, it is assumed that consumerswill not change preset thermostat settings, an assumption evaluatedin a study of 62 families. It was found that 60% of the sampledid not change their preset thermostats. Surprisingly, someof those families (27%) who did not increase their settingsstill had unsafe (> 54 degrees C) water temperatures.
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Tap water scalds in New Zealand.
A E Waller, J D Langley, and J Clarke
AJPH 1994 84: 1524.
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