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There is increasing evidence that the following prevention measures to reduce poisonings to children should be implemented, enforced and communicated to the European public:
- Child resistant packaging - introduction of regulations enforcing the compulsory use of child resistant packaging for all children’s aspirin and paracetamol preparations led to a dramatic fall in the number of children admitted to hospital with unintentional poisoning as a result of these medications in England, The Netherlands and the United States. This type of packaging would also be beneficial for specific non-pharmaceutical products.
- Safe storage - placing household cleaners and chemicals in a locked storage cabinet or using child protective products to lock the cupboards and drawers have been an effective means of preventing poisoning.
- Education - a school and parent education campaign to make household toxic products less accessible to children, accompanied by media to promote purchasing and using safer products and locked cabinets resulted in a 66% decrease in admissions to the emergency department for 0 – 5 year olds compared with two pre-intervention years and to control comparison sites.
- Monitoring of air quality - Carbon monoxide detectors with audible alarms are effective in alerting potential victims of carbon monoxide poisoning to its presence. Persons with these detectors are less likely to become symptomatic from the exposure than those who do not have these detectors in the home.
- Poison Control Centre and Hotline – in the United States it has been shown that for every dollar spent on poison control services an estimated $7 was saved in medical care payments by reducing the number of medically treated poisonings16. The savings per poisoning call were $175.
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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