National Poison Prevention Week March 21-27, 2021

National Poison Prevention Week: Prevention Is In Your Hands!
March 21-27, 2021

In recognition of National Poison Prevention Week, the Ontario Poison Centre would like to raise awareness about common household poisons, and how to prevent poisonings from occurring for all age groups.

In 2020, the Poison Centre received a total 66,977 calls, and saw a 6% increase in calls coming from the home (vs calls from hospitals, schools, workplaces and public areas). Additionally, in reviewing our top 10 home exposures, household cleaning products moved up to the #1 spot for children under 6yrs old (from #2 in 2019), and to the #3 spot in the all-ages group (from #4 in 2019). This shift may be related to the COVID-19 pandemic: more families have been staying at home to combat community spread of the virus, and there has been an increased focus on hand washing, cleaning and disinfecting.

The Poison Centre is also seeing an increase in cases of children unintentionally eating edible cannabis products and requiring hospital admission. In many cases these products were unregulated, looked almost identical to popular brands of candy, and contained many more milligrams of THC than approved by Health Canada.

The Ontario Poison Centre website (ontariopoisoncentre.ca) has several new/updated resources to help families stay safe:

• Common Poisons Section: You can browse through a searchable list of household products to learn more about their poison risk, and what to do if someone has been exposed.
  Learn about the top 10 most common household exposures in 2020, separated by age group.
  Check out the poison storage checklist, made by our friends at Parachute (Canada’s national charity dedicated to injury prevention).
• For Families Section: Learn about poison prevention strategies you can use in your home. Visit our new cannabis hub to learn about why cannabis is more dangerous for children than for adults, and what you can do to prevent an unintentional poisoning from occurring.

The Poison Centre is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. During National Poison Prevention Week, look for hashtags #CheckforPoisons and #NPPW2021 to stay up to date with messages and activities taking place in North America related to poison prevention. New followers on each of our social media platforms will be entered into a draw to win an OPC poison prevention package, which includes a medication lock box.

National Poison Prevention Week March 21-27, 2021 (pdf) 

@ON_Poison

Ontario Poison Centre

ontariopoisoncentre

Remember: If an unintentional poisoning occurs, contact your local Poison Centre.
Canadian Poison Centres: https://www.ontariopoisoncentre.ca/get-help/canadian-poison-centres/