Dangerous Medication

Lady Nancy Astor:
“Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.”
Winston Churchill:
“Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.”

Remember Mr. Yuk and the danger of toddlers drinking the chemicals stored under your sink? New reports indicate that parents have forgotten that prescription medicines left at bedsides and in unlocked medicine cabinets can be just as deadly. When we visited my sister in July, one of my nieces (age 7) asked me to reach the Flintstone vitamin pills from a high kitchen shelf. I said, “No way”. I was not about to administer any medicine without approval of her mother. The niece thought it perfectly safe and saw nothing wrong with helping herself to vitamins.

According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control, “poisoning” has overtaken firearms as the second leading cause of death from injuries, and it’s not far behind the number one killer- motor vehicle accidents. From 1979 to 2006 the rate for poisoning more than doubled whereas firearm and car accidents have declined.

The CDC defines a poison as "any substance that is harmful to your body when ingested (eaten), inhaled (breathed), injected, or absorbed through the skin. Most deaths from “poison” are unintentional and caused by overdosing on medications or adverse interactions between medications.

A second CDC report revealed that prescription and over-the-counter medications account for almost 7 out of 10 emergency room visits for childhood poisonings. Each year more than 71,000 children ages 18 and younger visit hospital emergency rooms for unintentional medication overdoses. Most of the ingestions are among toddlers. Over 80 percent of the medicine over-ingestions were unsupervised (i.e. not administered by an adult).

The medications children most often over-consumed included acetaminophen (such as Tylenol), aspirin, ibuprofen, opioids (such as Percodan), benzodiazepines (such as Valium and Xanax), cough & cold medicines, and antidepressants.

Bottom Line

Put your medications in a locked medicine cabinet or box and be sure to always replace child-resistant caps. When parents of small children visit other people's homes, they should make sure the homeowner's medications are also out of reach.

When I was age 13, I babysat for a neighbor and thought all was well. When the parents came home they found a white substance around the mouth of their sleeping toddler. Somehow he had found an asprin bottle and eaten the contents. To this day I have no clue how he did that.