Blog entry #2

Noah Swart

EH – 2000

Blog Topic – American Association/annual report

  Poison control centers are something almost everyone has seen at least once on a warning label. Of course, unlike the widely known emergency numbers like 911 but when time comes nobody can remember the number for the poison control. Just by calling 1-800-222-1222 you can have access to both information regarding all forms of poisons, but also access to statistics, emergency poison help and up and coming research on the daily toxic leaks.

The dangers

  Poison is normally portrayed as something that rarely happens and only does if it is an intentional criminal act. The reality is that poisonings happen all the time, and unintentional poisoning is the most common form. Inside the website of the American Association of Poison Control the current annual report is listed. This report lists the annual report for poison control centers. When it comes to the average age of who ingests the most poisons/toxins it is made up largely by children, the age of six and under precisely 47.7%. This may be surprising to a few people but the fact of the matter is that young children don’t have the ability to question what they put in their mouths. Even more so in the instance of children three or under who make up 35.6% of poison cases, this is due to the fact that young children lack the senses needed to learn an object through touch. With their mouths they are able to feel the object and learn its capabilities.

AAPCC 

  How do people, and mostly small children manage to get these toxins/poisons in their bodies? Well 79.4% of poison exposures are unintentional, with 53.8% being overall unintentional acts, 12.6% being therapeutic errors, and 5.8% being unintentional misuse. Realistically the fear some hold of being poisoned is just a fear and never holds a huge merit. Of course, this doesn’t apply for the chance that a mistake of someone else’s could be what gets you poisoned.

  With the idea that babies’ major routes of exposures are indeed their mouths, as they are always putting things in their mouths one wouldn’t be all that surprised that the most common route of exposure is ingestion 83.7% normally and with fatality rates of 81.4%. This is due to a few reasons, one a lot of poisons are easy to ingest, are commonly in liquid form, and because our skin has a built in protection for what it absorbs into our bodies. The second largest rate for exposure fatalities is inhalation coming in at 10.1%, which itself is also very realistic. We are of course constantly breathing and sometimes not even the nose can pick up toxic poisonous gases. The third greatest route of exposure is unknown 7.8% because a lot of the time tracking the type of poison and process of ingestion can be difficult.

 These statistics change every year, and that’s why the American Association of Poison and Control does well to monitor and research how the overall percentage of poison/toxin deaths can be diminished in our society. This should also apply to the person, as everyone should be vigilant about what they put into their bodies, either It be a soft drink or the typical work day hazardous gasses that one may run into, or simply just what your baby manages to get in mouth distance. Any of these methods can decrease the rate at which one becomes ill.