OCR Text |
Show Drugs dangerous for children In the United States each year there are approximately 500 known deaths due to accidental acci-dental poisoning among children child-ren under the age of 5 years. The actual number is probably considerable higher, since many poisoning deaths undoubtedly go unrecognized as such. The incidence of non-fatal poisoning poison-ing in this age group is unknown, un-known, but is undoubtedly in the hundreds of thousands each year. Consequently, the toll in terms of expense, occupation of physicians and hospital and emergency facilities, suffering and damage Is tremendous. More than half of the cases, both of fatal and non-fatal poisoning, in small children are due to drugs. Among the cases attributable to drugs half of the accidental ingestions and nearly two-thirds of the deaths are caused by aspirin. In fact, aspirin causes several times more cases of accidental rjoisoninp" and nnisnTn'Tip Heath in young children than any other drug. Additional drugs which are serious offenders are iron preparations, sedatives and tranquilizers. |