According to The University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, nearly 1 in 4 grandparents keep prescription medications in places children can easily access. Each year, more young children visit the emergency room for unintentional medication poisonings than for car accidents.

The poll asked parents and grandparents of children, aged 1 to 5 years old, whether medicines were present in their homes and if so, how they are stored.

Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital Poll on Children’s Health, associate professor in the Child and Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the U-M Medical School, and associate professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, explained:

“Every 10 minutes a young child in the U.S. is taken to the emergency room because of possible poisoning from swallowing a prescription medicine or over-the-counter medicine.

Emergency room visits for accidental poisonings among young children have become much more frequent in the last decade. We hope the results of this poll are a reminder to parents, grandparents and all those who care for young children: check around your homes to make sure that medicines are safely stored out of reach.”

According to the poll, 5% of parents and 23% of grandparents said they stored prescription medications, as well as daily-dose boxes that children can open, in easy-to-access places.

In addition, 8% of parents and 18% of grandparents reported storing over-the-counter medications in easy-to-access places.

Opiate medicines, such as morphine-related painkillers, are the most prevalent type of prescription in accidental ingestions for young children. Furthermore, one of the most prevalent types of over-the-counter medicines that cause emergency room visits for possible poisonings among young children is acetaminophen, used to reduce fever.

In order to protect children from the dangers, parents and grandparents should keep medicine in child-proof containers and out of reach of young children.

The researchers found that approximately 66.6% of adults who responded to the poll would support new laws that would require companies to create single-dose packages of tablets, capsules and liquid medicines, thus making it more difficult for young children to ingest large quantities.

Davis explained:

“The support for potential new requirements for single-dose dispensing of medicine in solid and liquid format is quite strong. However, there may be barriers to passage of such legislation – not the least of which are environmental concerns about increasing packaging.”

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Written By Grace Rattue