Attention grandparents: Be sure to keep your prescription medicines where the grandkids can’t get at them. That’s the word from University of Michigan researchers who found as many as 1 in 4 grandparents leave drugs where children can easily find them.
Accidental poisonings from medicines cause more emergency room visits for children each year than car accidents, noted researchers who conducted the new survey. The UM's National Poll on Children's Health also found two-thirds of adults support single-dose packaging to avoid accidental poisoning.
"Every 10 minutes a young child in the U.S. is taken to the emergency room because of possible poisoning from swallowing a prescription medicine or over-the-counter medicine," said Dr. Matthew M. Davis, who directed the survey.
"Emergency room visits for accidental poisonings among young children have become much more frequent in the last decade. We hope the results of this poll are a reminder to parents, grandparents and all those who care for young children: check around your homes to make sure that medicines are safely stored out of reach."
The new findings are based on a survey of parents and grandparents of children aged 1 to 5 years who were asked about how medicines in their homes are stored. Pollsters found 23 percent of grandparents and 5 percent of parents store prescription drugs in easy-to-access places, including daily-dose boxes that children can open.
To keep children safe, medicine should be safely stored out of reach of young children, in child-proof containers.