The nurses, pharmacists and doctors who staff the 24-hour Poison Control Center (PCC) hotline at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia handle many calls from parents with small children who have ingested or been exposed to potentially dangerous substances in the home. Poisonings can cause injury and even death. Some basic lessons can help teach kids to avoid poisonings. Show
This manual, written by the Poison Control Center team, includes lesson ideas and activity sheets for preschool and elementary school students. Our goal is to make it second nature for kids to think twice before eating or drinking substances around the home, garage and yard, and to always ask their parents or another adult first. The Poison Control Center team cares about the safety of every child. We hope you find this manual useful in helping to keep your students safe. What is the Poison Control Center?The Poison Control Center was established in 1986 as an independent nonprofit organization. In 1993, the center became a division of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The PCC serves the public and healthcare providers in the Pennsylvania counties of Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Columbia, Dauphin, Delaware, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Montgomery, Northampton, Northumberland, Philadelphia, Pike, Schuylkill, Susquehanna, Wayne, Wyoming and York, and the three counties of the state of Delaware. The Center operates under the strict national standards of the American Association of Poison Control Centers and has been certified as a regional poison control center since 1987. The Poison Control Center embraces six missions within its region:
What happens when you call the Poison Control Center?When you call the hotline, a registered nurse, pharmacist or physician who has specialized training in toxicology answers the phone. The specialist assesses the seriousness of the poisoning exposure based on the substance, time of exposure, the patient’s symptoms and the potential for early intervention. This information is needed for the specialist to provide the appropriate treatment recommendations. We ask for your name and phone number so we can follow up by calling back to check on the patient. Follow-up is performed for each poisoning exposure that has resulted in symptoms or when there is the likelihood that the patient will become symptomatic. The staff uses a state-of-the-art information retrieval system called Poisindex that lists more than 600,000 household products, chemicals and medications, as well as other references. The Poison Control Center responds to more than 200 calls a day. The majority originate in the home and are made by the parent or relative of a small child. The workplace is the second most common site of a poisoning exposure. For parents: Calling the Poison Control CenterWhat to do in a poisoning emergency?
For parents: Keeping children safe from poisoningAwareness is the key to preventing poisonings. The first step in preventing poisonings is the recognition that any item has the potential to poison when used inappropriately.
Poisoning primer for educatorsWhat is a poison?A poison is any substance — solid, liquid or gas — that may injure or impair health, or even cause death when taken into the body or put onto the skin. Poisons come in all kinds of colors and shapes. Some are odorless and tasteless. Sometimes things that smell or taste good may be poisonous. Almost any substance can become a poison when used inappropriately or in excessive amounts, particularly in small children. Poisons are everywhere.In most homes, poisons can be found in almost every room. (See “Potential poisons in the home” below.) Most children and many adults think of poisons as very deadly substances that are mysterious, quick-acting and impossible to trace. They rarely consider cigarettes, perfume, shampoo, plants, vitamins with iron, and many other common household products as poisons. Labels can be misleading.People tend to think anything sold over the counter must be safe. Others assume if a product is not labeled “poison” it must be harmless. Most product labels, but not all, contain adequate information concerning use, storage and potential hazards. However, many people do not read the label carefully or at all. Caution, warning, danger, flammable, corrosive, hazardous, fatal, caustic, harmful and poison are examples of signal words that alert the user to potential hazards. Plants can be poisons.Plants are a common cause of potential poisoning in children under 5. Houseplants, yard shrubs, wild berries, trees and mushrooms are all attractive to children. Children should be taught not to put twigs, grass, berries or mushrooms in their mouths. There are many ways to be poisoned.Children can be poisoned through:
Potential poisons in the home
Children: At risk for poisoningsYoung children rarely understand that they could poison themselves. Small children, especially ages 1 to 5, are curious about the things around them, and have a great tendency to explore the world by putting everything in their mouth! To make matters worse, some poisonous substances look just like common foods or beverages, and may come in pretty packages that make children more attracted to them. For example, they may mistake the shiny crystals of a drain cleaner for candy, or pellets to kill insects or rodents as the funny-looking vitamins they take each day. How do poisonings happen?
When do poisonings occur?Poisonings can happen to anyone at any time. Most poisonings occur when household products are in use. It is not uncommon for a parent to leave a poisonous product unattended while cleaning, after the doorbell or telephone rings. Remember, it only takes a minute for a child to get into a poisonous substance. Poisonings also occur in times of stress, such as during a household move, if there is an illness or death in the family, or during the holidays. Poisonings also occur before meals when youngsters are hungry and parents or caregivers are preoccupied. Keeping kids safe: Educational interventionsAn attempt can be made to teach young children to avoid poisons, especially those that sometimes look like things we eat or drink. Unfortunately, there is little firm evidence that preschool children can reliably learn to avoid dangerous substances, and so the primary responsibility for prevention and early recognition of childhood poisonings falls to parents and, perhaps, older siblings. Still, we offer here some approaches that have been used by poison centers throughout the country to educate preschool children about this hazard. We have also provided similar exercises for older children who may have preschool-age siblings. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we provide materials to send home with each young child for their parents in an effort to take poison prevention education into every student’s home. Teaching children about poisonsWhen teaching about poisons, emphasis should be placed on the concept that people cannot always tell a poison by the way it looks, smells or tastes because:
This information is also available in a downloadable format and includes activity sheets for school-aged children. |