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.
