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- Poisoning is the sixth ranked cause of injury death for young children 0 to 14 years old in Europe. The youngest children are naturally at greatest risk. Children 5 years and under account for the majority of all poison exposures with children up to two years old especially vulnerable.
- Curiosity and the desire to put everything in their mouths place children at considerably greater risk for poison exposure than adults. They will eat or drink anything regardless of how it tastes. Children like the attractive packaging, good smells and are drawn to the colourful substances of many of the products found around the home.
- When exposed to poison, children are more likely to suffer serious consequences because they are smaller, have faster metabolic rates and their bodies are less capable of neutralising toxic chemicals.
- More that 90% of all poisonings occur in homes or within the home environment and many common household products can poison children, including cleaning supplies, alcohol, plants, pesticides, medicines, and cosmetics4. Cigarettes and tobacco can also cause sickness if eaten and should be kept well out of the reach of young children.
- A study of 100 cases of unintentional poisoning involving children who were brought to the emergency clinics of the two children’s hospitals in Athens, Greece showed that medicinal products were implicated in the majority of accidental poisonings (58%)5. But a surprising finding was that chewing and swallowing cigarettes was responsible for 15% of the childhood poising injuries; the risk of poisoning increased when one or both of the parents were smokers.
- A study found that 23 percent of the oral prescription drugs that were ingested by children under 5 belonged to someone who did not live with the child. Overall, 17 percent of the medicines ingested belonged to a grandparent or great-grandparent.
- Most poisonings occur when the product is being used.
- Also, poisoning incidents are often perceived as mainly due to unintentional ingestion by young children, yet significant numbers of poisonings are due to adolescent suicide attempts, via overdoses of narcotics and psychodysleptics (hallucinogens).
- Every year in the Netherlands a child between the ages of 0 to 5 dies from poisoning and 1,600 children in this age group are admitted to a hospital due to serious cases of poisoning6. Almost all of the poisonings occurred in the home and a caregiver was present in 94% of all accidents. In the majority of the cases the child received either very little or no attention due to circumstances or other duties being performed by the caregiver at the time of the poisoning.
- In 2002 in the UK almost 31,500 children aged under 15 went to the hospital after suspected poisoning – over 26,000 of these were under five years old8. Of these, about 7,000 children under 15 were admitted to hospital, a very high proportion of admissions when compared with other types of accidents. The cause of the poisoning was associated with medicines 69% of the time – a quarter of these being commonly used drugs such as analgesics. In the United Kingdom, 6 children died of accidental poisoning in 2002.
- Carbon monoxide is also a form of poisoning. It is an odourless and colourless gas that is produced during any combustion process. The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are similar to early signs of the flu and include: fatigue, chest pain in people with heart disease, headache, nausea, dizziness, confusion, and impaired vision and coordination. Carbon monoxide poisoning can be fatal at high concentrations. In the United Kingdom carbon monoxide causes a death almost every week in the winter.
Products to watch out for:
- Pills, medicine: Aspirin, medicine, vitamins, diet pills, and diet supplements.
- Bathroom: Cleaners, sprays, perfume, cologne, hairspray, and mouthwash.
- Household products: Cleaners, polishes, solvents, and products with lye and acids.
- Garage, work room : Insect sprays, lamp oil, kerosene, lighter fluid, turpentine, paint, glue, batteries, tire fluid and antifreeze.
- Laundry room: Detergents, bleach, fabric softeners, and pet products.
- Outdoors: Fertilizers, pesticides, plants, and berries.
- Medical spending for poisoning treatment in the United States totalled $3 billion with an average of $925 spent per case.
This information has been taken from the Fact sheet on Poisoning published by the Alliance in October 2006. This fact sheet including the references to the information above is available here.
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