As strange as this may sound to you, people get poisoned even in their homes! Every year, poison call centers in the USA alone receive more than 2 million reports of poisoning. Of these 2 million, more than 90% of them occurred in the home.
The majority of these instances are completely accidental mistakes that could have been prevented if the right measures were put in place.
In this article, we will guide you through the symptoms of poisoning and how to prevent the occurrence of such in your home.
Common Symptoms of Accidental Poisoning
While the percentage of poisonings per year that lead to fatal consequences are far fewer than those who don’t, they are not chances that you should play with. Here are a few of the symptoms of accidental home poisoning:
- Difficulty breathing
- Difficulty speaking
- Dizziness
- Unconsciousness
- Foaming or burning of the mouth
- Cramps
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Fever: sudden high body temperature
- Loss of appetite
Ways to Prevent Accidental Poisoning
If you’re in the presence of anyone exhibiting some of the symptoms of food poisoning, you shouldn’t reach out for your phone and make videos or panic and do nothing. Make your way quickly to the health center nearest to you. Here are 7 other important and effective measures you can take to prevent accidental poisoning:
- Install safety locks around your house: Children are at the highest risk of ingesting harmful substances. They’re sometimes too curious and adventurous for their good; keeping an eye on them isn’t as easy as it sounds. This makes them extremely susceptible to taking in dangerous substances.
To reduce the risk of this, install safety locks/childproof latches on cabinets that might contain any dangerous substance. Also, ensure you take your children for regular visits to the pediatrician.
- Keep your medicines, chemicals, and other household products in their original containers with the labels on them. DO NOT remove the labels on them for whatever reason. These labels would serve as a means of identification to prevent one from making the mistake of confusing for another non-harmful product similar in appearance.
- Poison isn’t always ingested through the mouth. Sometimes, one can be poisoned by accidentally breathing in harmful chemicals. There are lots of such dangerous airborne chemicals, but the most common of them all is Carbon monoxide (CO). Get and install a carbon monoxide detector in your home as soon as possible. The best places to install them are in your bedroom and kitchen.
- While attempting to get rid of rodents in your house, make sure not to drop whatever you’re using to get rid of them haphazardly around the house. Do not put roach powder or rat poison on the floors of your home where a clueless child could just easily put it in their mouth.
- If you’re not a scientist or chemist, DO NOT mix different chemicals. The two might react and produce something toxic and highly dangerous. For instance, do not mix bleach and ammonia. The combination would create and release harmful chemicals.
- Keep all your button batteries in places where they cannot be easily reached, especially by your children. Children, with their sporadic curiosity, like to put random things into their mouths. Ingesting these kinds of batteries can be very fatal to anyone.
- Don’t put all of your trust into the safety caps. While they may slow down the child for a while, they won’t keep them away for life. If the child is stubborn enough, they just might go past the safety caps themselves. Hence, your best bet would be to keep them far out of the reach of the child, safety cap enabled or not.
Final words
Thing is, children are far more prone to accidental poisoning than adults are. And sometimes, no matter how careful one is, accidents still happen. If you ever find yourself in such a situation where your child or someone else you know ingests a potentially harmful substance, get them immediately to a primary care clinic. Reach out to us at once if you have questions or need to connect with a good doctor.
