3/21/2010

National Poison Prevention Week

Safe Kids North Central Florida offers these additional tips:

• Get your home tested for lead. Kids inhale the dust of lead-based paint and can build up enough lead in their blood to affect intelligence, growth and development. In 2002, there were 310,000 children ages 6 and under with elevated blood lead levels. Houses built before 1978 often used lead paint, so in older homes paint chips and dust can make children and even adults sick.

• Install a carbon monoxide detector in every sleeping area. Carbon monoxide is an invisible, odorless gas that builds up around fuel-burning appliances — and cars in garages — and is present in tobacco smoke. It can make a child seriously ill in concentrations that would barely affect an adult.

• Stay alert while using cleaning products or other potentially harmful substances. A child can be poisoned in a matter of seconds. Never leave kids alone with an open container of something you wouldn’t want them to ingest.

• Don’t refer to medicine or vitamins as candy. Children should not think of therapeutic substances as treats. And when you are administering medicine to your children, follow dosage directions carefully.

• Store medications and any potentially harmful products in their original containers with their original labeling, out of reach of children.

• Learn which plants are poisonous. Keep poisonous houseplants out of reach, and teach children not to put any part of an outdoor plant in their mouths without adult supervision.

• Discuss these precautions with grandparents and relatives. Grandparents may have medications that can be very dangerous to children, and their homes might not be as well childproofed as yours.

• Learn CPR. In less than three hours, you can learn effective interventions that can give a fighting chance to a child whose breathing and heartbeat have stopped. You can call your local American Red Cross Chapter for upcoming CPR classes.