Glossary
Home safety is always a necessity in a world where the unexpected can wreak havoc at any time. Below are some terms regarding home safety and home security systems.
- Anoxia: oxygen deprivation
- Burglary Alarm: a security system designed to prevent unwanted intruders from entering a home
- Burn: an injury to the skin or other body tissues caused by heat, chemicals, electricity, friction or radiation
- Carbon Monoxide: odorless, tasteless and colorless gas emitted from many household appliances and car exhaust emissions
- Carbon Monoxide Detector: sounds an alarm when higher than acceptable levels of carbon monoxide are detected
- Central Monitoring System: a system that monitors home security systems in a central location away from the alarm and responds to alarm breaches by notifying appropriate area emergency personnel
- Choking: the inability to breathe because of a blocked internal body airway
- Door and Window Sensors: when a door or window is opened, a sensor relays an alarm signal to a customer monitoring center
- Emergency: a situation requiring immediate action
- Emergency Phone: phones that include emergency assistance numbers and alarms
- Fire (Smoke) Detector: a device that detects an unacceptable amount of heat for the spaces and emits an alarm throughout the home and possibly to a central monitoring service
- First-degree Burn: an injury to the skin's outer layer causing red, dry skin
- Fracture: a break or crack in bone
- Glass Break Detectors: a device that triggers an alarm when the sound or vibration of breaking glass is detected
- Hazard: danger or peril
- Home Alarm System: a system where a home is protected from intruders, fire or carbon monoxide poisoning by an alarm sounding when something is amiss
- Ingest: to place something into the body by swallowing
- Inhale: to breathe into the body
- Inject: to force fluid into the body
- Light Activation: a device that turns on your lamps when either a fire/intruder is detected or at preset times of the day
- Low Temperature Sensors: sensors that alert a monitoring center when temperatures inside your home drop below a pre-set level
- Motion Detector: devices that detect movement and can turn on lights or alarms
- Nontoxic: nonpoisonous
- Paging Features: a system that alerts the owner of break-ins, fires or even that children have arrived at home
- Poison: a substance that can cause harm to a person's body
- Remote: allows you to arm or disarm a security system, open your garage door or turn on the lights in your home using a hand-held device or a telephone.
- Safety: an absence from danger or injury
- Second-degree Burn: an injury involving the skin's outer and underlying layer resulting in redness, pain, swelling and blisters
- Sensitivity: an individual response to external stimuli
- Skin graft: skin removed from one part of the body that is used to replace damaged or missing skin in another part of the body
- Suffocate: to block the oxygen supply to the lungs resulting in death
- Temperature: the measure of the warmth or coolness of an object or the air
- Thermal burn: an injury caused by heat
- Third-degree burn: an injury involving the skin's outer and underlying layer plus the loose connective tissue below the skin. It results in the destruction of skin tissue and usually causes extensive scarring.
- Toxic: poisonous
- Toxin: poisonous substance
- Trachea: the tube (or windpipe) leading from the upper airway to the lungs that branches into the two tubes that lead to each lung
- Video Monitoring: cameras set up at strategic entry points to view all activity that occurs there
- Wound: an injury to soft tissue
Check out our Home Security A to Z guide which will help you with everything you need to know about home security and alarm systems.