American Association of Poison Control Centers

Lindsay Pasquale

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American Association of Poison Control Centers

The American Association of Poison Control Centers duty is to help prevent and treat poison exposures. They are available at all times of the day, every day, and to contact them the number is 1-800-222-1222. The service is open to anyone seeking information, and to help. In 2014 there were 663,305 calls regarding prevention, safety, education, administrative, and caller referral.

The poison center Managing Directors mostly are PharmDs or RNs with American Board of Applied Toxicology (ABAT) board certification in clinical toxicology. There is a lot of specialized training involved. Poison center managing directors are responsible for patients care information service operations, clinical education, and staff instruction. Poison control centers are highly trained and knowledgeable.

Poison exposure causing death in five year olds or younger were mostly coded as “unintentional” and those over 12 years old were mostly “intentional”. Children five and younger typically don’t know right from wrong, it is very dangerous for them to be near any type of poison. For example, cleaning material stored in cabinets, if it’s not locked or put away children have easy access to it. By the age of 12, kids should know better and know what could be potentially dangerous. The children younger than three years old were involved in 35.6% of exposures and children younger than six years old are accounted for about half of all human exposures, 47.7%. Most of the human exposures were acute cases. One and two year olds are most likely to get poisoned, which isn’t much of a surprise knowing how that age group tends to put everything they can get a hold of in their mouth. This leads to ingestion, the consumption of a substance this normally taken through the mouth into the gastrointestinal tract, which is the major pathway to being poisoned. Children do not know any better so it is crucial to limit the exposure.

I experienced poison as a child when I was about five years old. I was with my family watching the firework show at a festival on the fourth of July. The glow sticks quickly grabbed my attention and I have quite a few around my neck and wrist. The night ended shortly when one broke open in my mouth due to chewing on it, even though my mother told me not to. I immediately told my mom what happened and began to wash my mouth out with water until we got home. She called poison control and I wasn’t the only child that did this that night. They said I would be fine and to keep rinsing my mouth out. This was a perfect example of how easy it is for children to poison themselves.

The reason for human exposure was mostly unintentional, but also with unintentional general, therapeutic error, and unintentional misuse. Children under five years old was unintentional while most fatalities in adults 20 years old or older we intentional.

Analgesics, also known as pain killers create the largest percentage of calls. There are different forms of analgesics such as, narcotic and non-narcotic. For adults, overdose and poisoning in result of painkillers are the most common calls.