THE MENACE OF CHILDHOOD POISONING

THE MENACE OF CHILDHOOD POISONING

 "Beware--poison is some other name" is an apt slogan recently adopted by the National Planning Council. Each year now, more than one million cases of poisoning (85 percent of them among young children) occur in the United States, leading to thousands of deaths and a great deal of sickness and suffering. Actually, the death figure given-which is sometimes put at 3,000 annually-is much too low, many authorities believe. 

Many more children die each year because of accidental ingestion of or exposure to toxic chemicals in household agents and drugs, but the correct diagnosis is not made because incriminating evidence is not detected or recognized. Not infrequently, for example, symptoms from irritation of the central nervous system and obvious convulsions lead to the diagnosis of viral encephalitis. "Poisoning," says Dr. Jay M. Arena, President of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, "is now the most common medical emergency among young children that exists in pediatrics." 

No mother, of course, deliberately goes shopping for poisons, but she buys several every time she goes to market.

She uses them whenever she cleans house, polishes the furniture, washes dishes, paints, cleans spots off clothes. Often she is not aware of the dangers of these products due to failure to pay attention to the labels. Naturally curious children are tempted to investigate the more than 250,000 products and myriad medicines available and often present in the home. In a careful investigation into the precise circumstances surrounding child poisoning tragedies and near-tragedies, the Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston, made some discoveries which all parents should keep in mind: Most poisonings involve children big enough to walk but not over three years of age. 

The most dangerous time of day is during the hour just before the evening meal. The unpleasant taste of a potential poison has little deterrent value. Toddlers will swallow virtually anything. Parents tempt disaster when they underestimate a young child's ingenuity or overestimate his ability to obey orders. Every day, dozens of children poison themselves by getting medicine out of safety-cap bottles -bottles they are told never to touch but which are left within reach. Reports from the nation's 535 poison control centers indicate that, after aspirin, the products most commonly involved in childhood poisonings are insecticides, bleaches, detergents and cleaning agents, furniture polish, kerosene, vitamin and iron pills and syrups, disinfectants, strong acids and alkalis, and laxatives. 

As Dr. Arena notes, 75 percent of all poisonings in small children are within-sight drugs or household agents, which means that three out of four poisonings are due to carelessness or negligence and could be pre- vented by one very simple action-putting all medicines and chemical agents out of sight and reach of children.