Accidental Childhood Poisonings Mostly Due to Medicines

More than two-thirds of all emergency department visits for childhood poisoning involve prescription and over-the-counter medications, more than twice the rate of poisonings from consumer products, reports a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“We feel these data suggest that new poisoning prevention efforts should focus on the problems of medication poisoning,” said Daniel Budnitz, M.D., the senior study author.

Budnitz, director of the Medication Safety Program in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the CDC, and colleagues analyzed two years’ worth of data on pediatric emergency department (ED) visits for unintentional medication overdoses.

The study appears online and the in the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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