National Poison Prevention Week is this week and the American Association of Poison Control Centers is launching a new smart phone application that will allow the public to simply scan barcodes, be in contact with the Association’s website and emergency help centers and provide poison prevention tips at the touch of a button. The first app available will be the iPhone, with Blackberry, Droid and Windows 7 apps to follow.
Richard Dart, MD, PhD, president of the American Association of Poison Control Centers said:
“We want people to know that their poison center is at their fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This app will give Smartphone users an easy way to remember that their poison center is ready to help.”
Use the poison control center app to contact poison center experts immediately, because in a poisoning emergency, there’s no time to waste. The iPhone app will be available in late March with others following in the coming months.
National Poison Prevention Week, established in 1961, was designed to highlight the dangers of poisonings and how to prevent them. In that era, children primarily were at risk, typically from ingesting household products like drugs, pesticides and detergents. In recent decades, the introduction of safety interventions like poison prevention campaigns and child-resistant bottle caps have saved thousands of lives.
While children’s poisonings have declined, poisoning deaths are greatly increasing among adults. Adult poison deaths most frequently involve prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, illegal drugs, and alcohol.
A poison is any substance, including medications, that is harmful to your body if too much is eaten, inhaled, injected, or absorbed through the skin. Any substance can be poisonous if too much is taken. Poisonings are either intentional or unintentional. If the person taking or giving a substance did not mean to cause harm, then it is an unintentional poisoning.
Unintentional poisoning includes the use of drugs or chemicals for recreational purposes in excessive amounts, such as an “overdose.” It also includes the excessive use of drugs or chemicals for non-recreational purposes, such as by a toddler.
In 2007, 29,846 (74%) of the 40,059 poisoning deaths in the United States were unintentional, and 3,770 (9%) were of undetermined intent. Unintentional poisoning death rates have been rising steadily since 1992.
Unintentional poisoning was second only to motor vehicle crashes as a cause of unintentional injury death for all ages in 2007. Among people 35 to 54 years old, unintentional poisoning caused more deaths than motor vehicle crashes.
In 2007, 93% of unintentional poisoning deaths were caused by drugs. Opioid pain medications, such as methadone, hydrocodone, or oxycodone, were most commonly involved, followed by cocaine and heroin.
Among those treated in emergency rooms (ERs) for nonfatal poisonings involving nonmedical use of prescription or over-the-counter drugs in 2008, opioid pain medications and benzodiazepines (such as Valium) were used most frequently. Nonmedical use includes misuse, abuse or otherwise not taking a drug as prescribed.
Among children, ER visits for medication poisonings (excluding abuse and recreational drug use) are twice as common as poisonings from other household products (such as cleaning solutions and personal care products).
Events like National Poison Prevention Week emphasize the most common poisoning risks for adults and children, and offer educational resources for parents to protect their children and adults to make informed decisions regarding their use of prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
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Written by Sy Kraft, B.A.