Ontario doctor offers poison prevention advice for parents

We are paging Dr. Paul to join us and discuss vital poison prevention tips.

Accidental poisoning is all too common, especially in young children, and the medical officer of health and CEO of the Eastern Ontario Health Unit joined CTV’s Your Morning Ottawa to offer some guidance on poison prevention for parents.

“When I was working in the emergency room, we’d get calls, virtually every hour, asking, ‘My son took this, my child took this.’ So, it’s a real important problem,” Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, A.K.A. Dr. Paul, said.

“People don’t realize how easy it is for kids to get into these things.”

According to the Ontario Poison Centre, poison specialists assisted with an average of 189 cases per day in 2024. The centre says poisonings are most likely to happen in children under the age of six, and throughout 2024, they treated more than 24,000 patients in that age group.

Items parents should be mindful of

Dr. Paul says there are several hazardous household items that children commonly mistake for other harmless items. For instance, vibrantly coloured cleaning liquids are easy to mistake for common sports drinks, and even less vibrantly coloured cleaning products could be mistaken for juice.

“You’re washing the windows, all the sudden the child thinks this is a drink,” Dr. Paul said.

Parents should also be cautious of dishwasher and laundry pods, Dr. Paul says.

“These things, kids chew on them, and they actually explode and cause all kinds of damage,” he said. “There was a whole epidemic about 10 years ago.”

According to Dr. Paul, another potentially poisonous item is chewable vitamins. These vitamins typically resemble candies, but they can be harmful in high doses.

“For a dose a day, one pill a day, it’s fine. But if a child eats four or five of these, people don’t realize that vitamins can be very toxic,” he said.

Edible cannabis products present a similar hazard in that they are also often made to resemble popular candies and treats.

“We’ve had an epidemic, when cannabis was legalized, of children coming to the emergency room, mistakenly eating products like gummy bears and little cakes and chocolate brownies that had marijuana in them,” Dr. Paul said.

According to the Ontario Poison Centre, these 10 most common poison exposures for children under the age of six:

1. Pain relievers
2. Household cleaners
3. Personal care products
4. Vitamins
5. Foreign bodies/toys
6. Plants
7. Skin creams
8. Herbal and homeopathic remedies, dietary supplements
9. Pesticides
10. Antimicrobial medicines

What are the symptoms of poison ingestion?

When a child consumes a poisonous item, their symptoms may include vomiting and irritation to the mouth and throat, Dr. Paul said.

“These can actually burn the mouth, burn the lungs, and these are emergencies. If this happens, you have to go to the emergency room, no question about it,” Dr. Paul said.

In more serious cases, Dr. Paul says, children may end up unconscious, in a coma or potentially even dead.

How can parents keep their children safe?

According to Dr. Paul, the bottom line for parents is to keep an eye on their children. This is especially true while performing household chores, as hazardous materials may be readily available and parents may be distracted by the tasks they’re working on.

Dr. Paul also recommends locking up any potentially poisonous items.

“We tell parents all the time: keep things locked, double locked, and make sure they’re out of reach of children,” he said.

The Ontario Poison Center recommends storing medication in a fishing tackle box or toolbox with a lock. The centre also suggests disposing of old medications through a pharmacy and tracking the amount of pills in each bottle.

“You can do this by sticking a piece of masking tape on the side of the bottle. Write on the tape how many pills are in the bottle. Each time you take a pill from the bottle, subtract it from the total number of pills,” the Ontario Poison Center writes.

Harmful products should be kept in cupboards or containers, the Ontario Poison Centre says, and parents can purchase safety latches to keep them locked.

The Centre also says harmful products should always be stored in their original containers, so they aren’t mistaken for other items.

Visit the Ontario Poison Centre’s website for a look at common household hazards and for a full look at their poison prevention tips.

The Ontario Poison Centre can be contacted at 1-844-POISONX or 1-800-268-9017.

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