from University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital
Every ten minutes a young child in the United States is taken to the emergency room because of possible poisoning from swallowing a prescription medicine or over-the-counter medicine. That statistic comes from Dr. Matthew Davis, director of a national poll on children’s health at the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital. He says emergency room visits for accidental poisoning among young children have become much more frequent in the last decade. Among the findings are that twenty-three percent of grandparents reported storing prescription medicines in places where children can easily find them. The poll showed strong support for new laws that would require single-dose packages that would make it harder for children to ingest in large quantities.