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Agencies Offer Tips For National Poison Prevention Week

By Joel Hardy

03/16/2015

(KAIR)--National Poison Prevention week is underway now through Saturday, and the Kansas Poison Control Center, along with Safe Kids Kansas is reminding families that the best treatment for poisoning is prevention.

Safe Kids Kansas Director Cheri Sage says one of the best steps you can take is to limit access to medications and vitamins by keeping them out of sight and out of reach, because if children know where they are, they will find a way to get to them.

Sage also wants to remind parents that child resistant packaging does not mean that it is childproof. She says that “children actually learn how to open these medications by watching us do it in front of them repeatedly.”

If a child is exposed to a poison, Sage says the best thing to do is to contact the poison control hotline immediately at 1-800-222-1222. She says that “it's best to go to those experts because they can tell you what to do right away. We want to make sure you don't give them anything to drink or induce vomiting...they will let you know whether you can treat at home or if you need to make that trip to the emergency room. So they might even save you that trip if it's something that they say is fairly harmless...don't bother going to the internet, there is a lot of misinformation there.”

Sage also recommends that parents avoid using household utensils such as teaspoons or tablespoons to administer medication to a child. The dosing device packaged with the medicine should be used instead.

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