More Poison Injuries Seen in the Summer, What You Can Do to Help Prevent Them

While spring and summer often mean more choices for outdoor fun and activities, it can also be a time of the year when children face the highest danger to exposure of certain chemicals. During these months in particular, hydrocarbon toxins will injure nearly 30 children in the United States every day.

Harmful hydrocarbons include chemicals found in things like gasoline, lighter fluid, furniture polish, kerosene, lamp oil, mineral oil and some cleaning solvents. With Memorial Day and Fourth of July picnics, more children are exposed to those toxins, and that could lead to serious health problems.

Some toddlers may often try to swallow chemicals and can end up choking or inhaling the toxins into their lungs.

Researchers at the Central Ohio Poison Center and the Center for Injury Research and Policy, both at Nationwide Children's Hospital, recently released a study in the journal Clinical Pediatrics that shows hydrocarbon injuries are most likely to occur during the summer months. The injuries are associated with activities such as mowing lawns, using Tiki torches and utilizing lighter fluid for outdoor cooking. 

During the 10-year study period, exposure to hydrocarbons in children under age 5 led to 66,000 calls to regional poison centers and more than 40,000 emergency-department visits. We also found that more than 60 percent of the children injured were male, and most were between the ages 1 and 2.

What surprised us is that gasoline was the number one exposure that we saw, and when we looked to see why that occurred, we learned the exposure occurred when parents were refueling their cars at a gas station: Children would be outside the vehicles, pull the gas-pump hose out of the car and then splash themselves with gasoline.

The results of the study demonstrate a greater need to educate parents in order to prevent such injuries. The changing seasons should remind everyone to ensure that these types of hydrocarbons are stored in their original containers and that they are out of the reach of young children.

The number of injuries seen from exposure to hydrocarbons indicate that this health risk has significantly declined between 2000 and 2009 due to changes in packaging laws and public awareness. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, regulations were made in 2002 that harmful hydrocarbons be sold in child-resistant packaging. Those regulations helped drive down accidents dramatically.

The good news is that overall, the number of injuries due to exposure to hydrocarbons declined significantly between 2000 and 2009 due to changes in packaging laws and public awareness. In 2002, the Consumer Product Safety Commission passed regulations mandating that harmful, but they are only effective if parents leave those items in their original packaging. Many people put them into another bottle or container - like a juice or soda container ­- that does not have child-resistant packaging, and children can often times mistake these chemicals for another product, to only end up ingesting a toxic material.

Here are some safety tips parents should keep in mind:

• Store products properly and high up, where children can't see or reach them.
• Keep products in their original, child-resistant packaging or containers.
• Supervise children when toxic hydrocarbons are being used in and around the home.
• Keep cabinets with products containing hydrocarbons locked.
• Keep children safely in the vehicle during fuel fill-ups at gas stations.

To report a poisoning or get poison-prevention information, call your local poison center toll-free: (800) 222-1222.