Poison Safety

Learn about poison safety and what you can do to avoid poisoning in your family and home.

Hello! I am Colleen Driscoll. I'm the owner of a childproofing company called Baby's Home Safe Home. Today, we're talking about childproofing the kitchen. Now, we're going to talk about poison safety. I know the kitchen sync is a great place to start when you're looking at poison safety. This is a place where curious toddlers often find dangers such as cleaners and other poisons. Other poisons that exist in the kitchen can be plants, alcohol or vitamins and other medicines. Sometimes, we store poisons up high. I do recommend storing poisons up high, because it makes it harder for children to reach. However, it's very important for you to reassess, because children might drag a chair over to this area and gain access to something that could be dangerous. Cleaners can be confusing for children with their fun colors and smells. One of these is a cleaner and one of these is a beverage. It's important for you to keep these out of reach and out of sight, so children don't want to play with them. Some children might imitate parents. If they see mom spraying a blue bottle of cleaner, they might want to try it. So once again, let's keep it up, out of reach, away from your children. What can you do to prevent poisonings in your kitchen? One of the things that we do, as I mentioned before, is to move poisons up high. But once again, I'm going to remind you that you do need to reassess for a child that might try to drag a chair and reach to those items. It's generally best to keep things out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind does help with some children. We also recommend using child-resistant caps. They will slow children down, but they are not full-proof. Nothing is completely full-proof for a young child. Avoid taking your medicine in front of your children. Medicines come with fun colors. Because children like to imitate adults, they might try to get into a bottle of medicine. Be careful where your purses are stored, because that's a common place for children to get into medicine, especially at grandparents' homes. Also, we recommend that you store poisons in their original containers. If you ever have a poison emergency, they will ask you to bring the poison to the phone. It's also important to make sure your family members aren't confused as to what's in the bottle. Another important thing with poison safety is to make sure that you keep the poison center number handy. I recommend you putting on your refrigerator and by your phones, just in case you have a poison emergency. The number to call is 1800-222-1222. That's an easy number for you to start trying to remember. If you travel in the United States, it will route you to the closest poison center. If you do call the poison center, they will ask for your baby's weight. So that might be something that you want to include with your babysitter, emergency information. What else can you do? We remove kitchen plants a lot of times. Often, children like to eat the leaves or play in the dirt or possible break a pot. So generally, we're going to move plants out of a child's play environment. We move the alcohol up high. We also move the medicines up high or possibly in another room or in a locked cabinet. One other thing that we do in the kitchen and other rooms of the home with poison safety, is add cabinet latches. We're going to talk about those next.