Poisoning Prevention

Small Batteries Can Be Big Hazard to Young Children

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How many button batteries are in your home? After counting remotes, key fobs and toys, don’t forget the ones in thermometers, scales, and even singing greeting cards. Small batteries are everywhere, and that can spell danger for children.

According to data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, from 2010 to 2019 there was an average of one battery-related pediatric visit to the emergency department every 1.25 hours, up from one every 2.66 hours in the previous decade. The majority were children under 5, who swallow batteries or put them in their nose or ears.

Reese’s Law, enacted this summer,  will require that devices with button batteries carry a warning label to keep the batteries out of children’s reach and ensure they have child-resistant battery compartments. But adult awareness and supervision are still the best way to protect children. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends:

  • Check which electronic devices contain button batteries, and keep them out of children’s reach.
  • As with matches and lighters, keep all batteries locked and out of sight of young children.
  • Promptly recycle dead batteries or put them outside in a garbage can.
  • If you think your child might have swallowed a battery, or put it in their nose or ears, don’t hesitate.  Call poison control and head to the emergency department immediately.

Use Disinfectants Correctly

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Regular use of disinfectants has become routine in many homes. Most doctors and researchers say disinfectants are safe and effective when used correctly. This is a good time to double check how you’re using them.

Keep disinfectants on surfaces, not yourself.

Disinfecting products that use bleach or quaternary ammonium compounds (quats) are considered safe if used as directed. But be sure to use them in properly ventilated rooms to avoid inhaling them, which can cause irritation in some people, and wear gloves when applying. The EPA recommends using non-aerosol sprays or wipes.

Give them time to work.

Check the product label to know how long to leave the disinfectant on a surface before wiping. Typically they recommend leaving the surface visibly wet for 4-10 minutes

Check your hand sanitizer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends checking that your hand sanitizer has at least a 60% concentration of alcohol to be effective. Also check to make sure it hasn’t expired—evaporation can lower the effectiveness of sanitizers—and check this FDA list of sanitizers to avoid because of toxic additions or inadequate levels of alcohol.

Be extra careful with disinfectants around children

Young children can be effected by smaller amounts of disinfectant than adults. And children are also more likely to ingest them because they put their hands in their mouths. Wipe off bleach- and quat-based products after they’ve been on the surface for the necessary amount of time to disinfect (see above).

For more tips and instructions for how to make your own bleach solution, check here.

Be Safe When Choosing Hand Sanitizers

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Hand sanitizer has become a staple on our shopping lists. But some of the supply being produced to meet the demand is either not effective or downright dangerous, according to the Food & Drug Administration.

The FDA’s list of over 100 hand sanitizers to be avoided includes products with inadequate levels of alcohol, as well as those containing potentially dangerous methanol.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that, when soap and water are not available, alcohol-based hand sanitizers with at least 60 percent ethanol should be used. The FDA. has found at least 4 hand sanitizers with inadequate concentrations of ethanol, including: NeoNatural, Medicare Alcohol Antiseptic Topical Solution, Datsen Hand Sanitizer and Alcohol Antiseptic 62 Percent Hand Sanitizer.

The FDA has also reported a sharp increase in hand sanitizer products that have tested positive for methanol contamination. Methanol, or wood alcohol, can be toxic when absorbed through the skin and can be life-threatening if ingested. Don’t expect methanol to be listed on the ingredients: Check the list of hand sanitizers to be avoided.

Stay Safe When Disinfecting Your Home

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To stay safe, it’s important to use and store cleaning and disinfecting products properly. The CDC has these tips:

  • Keep cleaning products out of reach in homes with small children and pets.
  • Never mix chlorine bleach with ammonia–or any chemical other than water. This can create deadly gasses. (Note: Bleach can appear on ingredients lists as sodium hypochlorite).
  • Just as you shouldn’t directly mix chemicals in a bottle, be careful about using one product after another on the same surface. If you must use two separate products to clean and disinfect, wipe the surface thoroughly with water to remove all residue from the first product before using the second.
  • When using bleach keep the area well-ventilated.
  • Disinfectant sprays are meant to be used on surfaces, never on the body, pets, or food.

The CDC provides these directions for a proper bleach solution: 5 tablespoons of bleach per gallon of water, OR 4 teaspoons of bleach per quart of water. Make only as much bleach solution as you’ll need right now, because it starts to lose effectiveness after only about a day.

Child-Resistant Caps Still Need You to Prevent Medication Overdoses

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Child-resistant caps on medication bottles have helped reduce fatal poisonings of young children in the U.S. since they were mandated decades ago. But they can only protect children if they’re in place.

The holiday season brings visits to and from friends and families of all ages. Grandparents and adults who don’t usually have young children under the same roof may need to be reminded to carefully replace the cap on medications and keep medication bottles out of sight and reach.

Medications have overtaken household products such as cleaning fluids as the leading cause of child poisonings, and the number of ED visits and calls to poison control centers for medication overdoses is rising. Between 2005 and 2009, ED visits for medication overdoses among children younger than 5 years rose 20%.*

The peak incidence for unintentional medication overdoses is in 2-year-olds. It’s an age when young children are developing greater ability to move around on their own—and when their ability to reach surfaces previously out of reach can increase unexpectedly from one week to the next.

For all ages, analgesics (painkillers) are the #1 substance involved in poisonings reported to poison control centers, responsible for 11% of such poisonings.

The initiative Preventing Overdoses and Treatment Exposures Task Force (PROTECT) is promoting development of a new generation of safety packaging to limit the amount of medication a child could ingest even if a child-resistant cap has not been re-secured properly.

Acknowledging that even enhanced safety packaging will not be 100% “child-proof,” PROTECT has also launched the “Up and Away” public education campaign to promote safe use and storage of medications. Among their suggestions:  program the national poison control number (800-222-1222) into your cell phone.

Find more tips for preventing poisonings and other injuries in Prevention 1st’s Safety Resources.

*Data from the National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, and Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

1-Minute Moves That Stop Injuries

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You say you just don’t have time to prevent injuries?  If you’ve got less than one minute to devote to safety, use it to:

  1. Wipe up a spill right away. Falls are the leading cause of nonfatal unintentional injuries for every age group, except 10 to 24 year olds—and for them it’s the second leading cause! Wiping up spills is one of several simple ways to prevent falls.
  2. Not leave a child alone near water (yes, even for less than a minute). Kids don’t drown only in pools. Bathtubs, buckets, toilets, and hot tubs can be drowning dangers as well.
  3. Test your smoke alarm to make sure it’s still working, and everyone in your household can hear it. Even alarms that are hard-wired or have long-life batteries need to be checked. You should have at least one working smoke alarm on each floor, and one inside every sleeping area is best. Consider having both ionization and photoelectric alarms, or dual alarms that incorporate both technologies. Ionization smoke alarms respond best to flaming fires, and photoelectric to smoldering fires.
  4. Put away matches or lighters in a high cabinet or locked drawer, out of sight and reach of children. Children playing with fire is a leading cause of fire deaths for children under age 5.
  5. Turn off portable space heaters when you leave the room or go to sleep. Space heaters are involved in 32% of heating fires but cause 82% of associated deaths and 64% of injuries.
  6. Adjust the thermostat on your water heater to keep hot water less than 120°F, to prevent scalds.
  7. Turn off the stove if you have to leave the kitchen while cooking. Unattended equipment is the #1 contributing factor in cooking fire deaths.
  8. Put on your glasses and read the fine print on that medicine bottle. Unintentional poisonings have risen steadily since 1992, and for people 35 to 54 years old, they’re causing more deaths than motor vehicle crashes. Know how much, and how often, you can safely take any medication whether prescription or over-the-counter, as well as possible interactions with other drugs.
  9. Keep the metal mesh screen of your fireplace closed, but leave glass doors open while burning a fire. The U.S. Fire Administration says leaving the doors open gives the fire enough air and keeps creosote from building up in the chimney. The screen helps keep embers from getting out of the fireplace. Close the glass doors when the fire is out to keep air from the chimney from getting into the room.

Got a few minutes more? Use these 8 simple tips.

8 Simple Ways to Prevent Injuries

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Our 1-minute moves can prevent injuries and take a total of less than 10 minutes. If you can find just a few minutes more, use them to:

  1. Put away household cleaners and medications in a place that’s out of sight and reach of children.
  2. Clear clutter from hallways and exits to prevent tripping.
  3. Install handrails on stairs and adequate lighting at the top and bottom of the stairs. Leading causes of adult injuries include falls from stairs, steps and ladders.
  4. Use this fire safety checklist to check your home for hazards.
  5. Call to schedule an annual chimney cleaning.
  6. Play Help Mikey Make It Out with your kids. This fun, interactive game at homefiredrill.org teaches life-saving home escape lessons.
  7. Plan and practice your home escape. Working smoke alarms and CO detectors save lives, but does everyone in your home know what to do when they sound–especially in the middle of the night? Does everyone know your meeting place outside, where you can find each other and firefighters can find you? Visit homefiredrill.org.
  8. Check the manufacturers instructions to see if you should replace your CO detector. You need a  new detector every two to 10 years, depending on the model. Carbon monoxide kills in minutes, and unlike smoke from a fire it’s colorless, tasteless and odorless. It can be created by open flames, space heaters, water heaters, blocked chimneys or running a car inside a garage (even with the door open). If you have only one carbon monoxide detector, the Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends it be located near the sleeping area, where it can wake you.

Students Teach Younger Schoolmates to Avoid Injuries and Stay Safe

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6thGradersTeachSixth-graders at Rochester City School #17 learned about home safety and practiced their presentation and leadership skills through a recent series of Peer to Peer Home Safety Trainings through a grant to Prevention 1st from the John Wegman Fund of the Rochester Area Community Foundation.

In these workshops, students typically learn about such safety topics as fire and burns, smoke alarms and exit plans, household hazards, kitchen safety, and poison prevention, which they then teach to their schoolmates. For this training, the school’s principal asked for a presentation on one particular aspect of poison prevention–exposure to lead. Two students whose lives had been affected by lead poisoning took on the topic, telling their own stories and teaching schoolmates how to help keep themselves, younger siblings and their families safer. Learn more about lead poisoning prevention in this article by our training partner Community Health Strategies.

John Wegman Fund board members Betty Wells and Susan Touhsaent attended the students’ presentations to second- and third-graders at School #17. Ms. Wells told Prevention 1st:

“I was impressed by both the individuals staffing the program and the young people attending. The adults gave lots of individualized attention but allowed the students to follow their own plans.  Each adult offered a different skill set which helped all students. [The youth] showed an ability to work as teams and come out with a good product in a fairly short period of time. Each power point was so different and had their individual touches.”

 

Learn more about Prevention 1st‘s Peer to Peer Home Safety Training.