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Poisoning incidents often take place as young children consume or inhale pharmaceutical products, cosmetics, and chemical products containing hazardous materials.
* ‘Young children’ means children under six.
The Korea Consumer Agency (President: Kim, Young-Seen, www.kca.go.kr) recently conducted an analysis on 217 poisoning accidents engaging young children (including 58 survey results), which have been reported to the Consumer Injury Surveillance System (CISS) from 2006 to end-June of 2009 and found that accidents involving young children under three took up 89% (194 out of 217 cases) of total poisoning accidents engaging young children.
As a poison-triggering item, household chemical products (118 cases, 54%) topped the list followed by pharmaceutical goods (80 cases, 37%), and cosmetics (19 cases, 9%). In case of therapeutic products, accidents (47 cases) involved with prescription drugs (diabetes medicines, blood pressure medicines, & etc.) took place more often than those involving over-the-counter drugs (32 cases) such as vitamin tablets and digestive medicines. In this regard, requirements for child-resistant packaging need to be extended to prescription drugs as well.
Based on these findings, the KCA plans to ask the Government to 1) extend requirements for child-resistant packaging to plastic containers of prescribed drugs; and 2) establish the Poison Control Center for first-aid treatment and a prompt action in case of poisoning accidents to prevent child poisoning accidents due to pharmaceutical and chemical products at home.
Meanwhile, the KCA continued to request parents’ close supervision over medicines and household products containing toxic substance at home as many of child poisoning accidents take place due to parents’ neglected supervision or carelessness.
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