Beware Poison Potential For Common Household Items
By Artemis DiBenedetto, ConsumerReports.org // June 2, 2013
Keeping Children Safe and Secure
ABOVE VIDEO: Today Show reports on the importance of parents being aware of household products that are poisonous, and how to manage those products to ensure their children’s safety.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Our highest priority as parents is to keep children safe and secure and help them live to their full potential. Being aware of and understanding how to prevent leading causes of child injury, like poisoning, is a step toward that goal.
It’s not just chemicals in your home marked with clear warning labels that can be dangerous to children. Active, curious children will often investigate, and sometimes try to eat or drink, anything that they can get into. The report excerpted below from ConsumerReport.org’s Consumer News page highlights the most common everyday items in your home, such as cosmetics and personal care products, household cleaners, toys and small items and various types of medicines, that can be poisonous to children, and provides tips on how to poison-proof your home and protect the children you love.
CONSUMERREPORT.ORG–Every day two children die and more than 300 kids under the age of 19 are treated in emergency rooms as a result of unintentional poisoning. In fact, over the last decade, there’s been an 80 percent increase in child poisoning deaths. During National Poison Prevention Week, experts are reminding parents about the everyday products in their homes that put children at risk. Here are the five most common household culprits, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, and how to keep them secure in your home.
Cosmetics and personal care products. The number-one substance causing child poisonings in 2011, the most recent year for which we have data, was personal care products. Keep your makeup, skin- and hair-care products, and other toiletries secured in drawers or cabinets with child locks, or on shelves out of your child’s reach. Products such as nail-polish remover can seriously harm a child.
CLICK HERE to read about the other four most common children’s poison hazards on ConsumerReports.org.
In an emergency, call 1-800-222-1222. Keep the phone number of the poison control center programmed into your cell phone and on display in several locations around your home.
