Warning to keep detergent capsules out of children's reach

PARENTS HAVE been warned to store detergent capsules out of reach as some 1,500 cases of children ingesting household products were reported last year.

Some 10,000 inquiries about human poisoning were reported to the National Poisons Information Centre at Beaumont Hospital last year, according to its annual report.

Suspected poisonings of children under 10 made up the majority of the inquiries (52 per cent) with more boys than girls suffering suspected poisoning.

Most of the inquiries (1,500) about children ingesting household products concerned children under 10.

Children under five made up most cases of ingesting liquid detergents.

Laundry products, especially liquid detergent capsules and cleaning products, were the most common products ingested in this age group.

“It is important that capsules are stored out of the reach of children and when parents are using them they don’t let them out of their sight,” director of the centre Dr Joe Tracey said.

Parents should get capsules “into the washing machine and close the washing machine so they are not available for the child to put in his mouth,” he told RTÉ news.

Paracetamol remained the most common drug reported in poisonings across all age groups.

Almost 1,400 inquiries related to paracetamol, while about 500 related to ibuprofin.

More than one-fifth of the cases were intentional poisoning or recreational drug use.

These tended to occur at night, which reflected the pattern of presentations to hospital emergency departments after self-harm, the report stated.

Suspected accidental poisonings accounted for more than half of human cases reported to the centre, while in excess of 10 per cent were the result of therapeutic errors.

Overall, adults over 20 years of age made up less than one-third of cases of poisoning and these were mainly female adults.

The centre was aware of nine deaths from poisoning last year. Six of these were caused by pharmaceuticals, three by agrochemicals pesticides and one by a household product.

The centre also saw an increase in inquiries about alcohol hand gel. In previous years, these cases mainly occurred in healthcare settings.

However, last year there was an increase in the number of young children who were exposed to the gel at home.

Overall there has been a small decrease (6 per cent) in the number of inquiries received by the centre last year compared to 2008.

An average of 27 calls per day were received by the centre.

One-third of these calls were from GPs or GP co-ops, one-third from hospitals and one-quarter of calls were directly from members of the public.