Good medicine for poison prevention

2006-05-09

Picture it. The kids are fighting, the dog is barking, and the phone is ringing again! To make matters worse, a splitting headache has settled in and you’re struggling to get the lid off the bottle of pain medication. Although this might sound like a nightmare, it’s a dream any parent would gladly choose over the real horror of their child being accidentally poisoned.

Today, thanks to heightened awareness and vigilance that includes mandatory child-resistant packaging for many over-the-counter and prescription medications and other toxic household substances, child fatalities and serious injuries caused by accidental poisonings in Canada are relatively low.

This wasn’t always the case.
Innovation, not just education

When the late Dr. Henri J. Breault became chief of pediatrics and director of a new poison control centre at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Windsor, Ont. in 1957, he was appalled by the number of children being accidentally poisoned by swallowing products found in their homes. When he realized that public education alone was not having a big impact, he turned his focus to making it harder for kids to get into potentially fatal products.

Armed with the input of local physicians and pharmacists, Dr. Breault enlisted Peter Hedgewick, president of ITL Industries, who after several attempts, successfully created the first child-resistant cap in 1967. The "Palm-N-Turn" technology, which is still being used today, requires users to push down while turning. By 1974, Ontario had made the use of child-resistant packaging mandatory for certain products. Similar regulations were quickly adopted nationwide.
Safety concerns inspire voluntary standardization

As is the case for many health and safety regulations, standards play a vital role in assuring that packaging is manufactured to meet the requirements for safety that are sought by regulators. Many manufacturers are choosing to use the standards to ensure the safety of their packaging, even if they are not required by law to do so.

In collaboration with manufacturers, consumers, and regulators, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has overseen the development of national standards for child-resistant packages.

The standards, which have been adapted for Canada from existing international and American standards, set out requirements for construction and performance. They  aim to ensure that while packaging is difficult for young children to open, it remains convenient for use by adults, including senior citizens who may have reduced dexterity.
Standardized packaging leads to fewer accidental poisonings

Eleanor Warren is someone who has seen first-hand how child-resistant packaging has impacted child health and safety in Canada. She works at the Ontario Regional Poison Information Centre within the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa. As a registered nurse with expertise in poisoning, she has seen too many cases of children accidentally poisoned.

"There is no question that there has been a significant decrease in the number and severity of accidental poisonings due to child-resistant packaging," says Warren. She cautions, however, against the use of the term "childproof" when it comes to any packaging. She says this can lead parents to a false sense of security. "There isn’t any kind of device that can replace good parental supervision," says Warren.
Safety measures and supervision work together

To illustrate her point, she recounts the story of a parent who called the poison hotline complaining that their child had been poisoned after managing to open a bottle of Tylenol. When questioned about how the child had gotten access to the pills, the parent admitted to giving the bottle to the child to play with and to thinking it was safe because the lid was supposed to be childproof.

Warren is quick to defend the use of child-resistant packaging, even if it is not infallible. She says it is just one of a series of measures that needs to be taken to reduce the risk of accidental poisonings, the most important of which is to keep harmful substances out of reach of children, preferably locked up.

-30-

NOTE: This article first appeared in volume 32 of CONSENSUS Magazine, 2005.  The information it contains was accurate at the time of publication but has not been updated or revised since, and may not reflect the latest updates on the topic.  If you have specific questions or concerns about the content, please contact the Standards Council of Canada.

Back