12pm-1pm (15 calls)

1. A 2 year old girl was playing in mom’s dresser and squirted perfume into her eyes.
2. An adult female patient presented to the emergency room with severely blistered hands.  The patient recently purchased some ‘all natural’ household cleaner, and she assumed since all the ingredients were all-natural it would be safe to use to disinfect her hands.  The product’s ingredients, while perfectly natural, were caustic and caused chemical burns. Read more »

10am-11am (13 calls)

1. An ER called for assistance with an adult male who was pulled unconscious from a tank he had been cleaning at his worksite.
2. A 3 year old child has eaten several granules in a silica gel packet. Read more »

9am-10am (10 calls)

1. A 3 year old child ingested an entire roll of Rolaids.®
2. An 18 month old child was found sucking on the wick of a oil-based plug-in air freshener. Read more »

8am-9am (6 calls)

1. A 14 month old child took a bite out of his mother’s deodorant stick.  Mom was able to remove most of the material from his mouth but he swallowed some.
2. A 2 year old child ingested an unknown amount of gummy vitamins. Read more »

7am-8am (6 calls)

1. An 11 month old child was playing with the tube of Desitin® diaper cream while his father changed his diaper.  He bit into the tube and ingested a mouthful of the cream.
2. A mom called because she accidentally gave her 2 month old her other child’s heart medication. Read more »

Midnight-7am (35 calls)

Midnight to 7am

1. A 3 year old woke up in the middle of the night and went to play in a closet while his parents were asleep.  He tipped mango scented laundry soap up to mouth , ingested some and spilled it on his face.
2. A 20 year old woman was depressed and took a handful of ibuprofen.
3. An emergency room called requesting advice Read more »

Wow, I Bet You Hear Lot of Interesting Stuff! What Kind of Calls Do You Get?

I get asked this a lot when people find out I work for the Illinois Poison Center.  There is an intense fascination with the sorts of things that are called into a poison center.  These questions come in conversation, e-mail and the internet.  As an example, our very first Twitter response was “What is the craziest call you have ever gotten?” Read more »

You might say the Illinois Poison Center is the antidote to unnecessary health care costs

A Poison Center means different things to different people

• For a parent, it is a place to call for treatment advice if their child eats, drinks, rubs onto their skin or breathes a potentially harmful substance
• For a doctor or nurse, it is the place to call for treatment recommendations for potentially poisoned patients in their care
• For health educators, it is the lead organization for materials and assistance in providing poison prevention education in their communities
• For researchers, our database is the place to come for trends and analysis for potentially emerging outbreaks to hazardous substances

At this time of year, as health care reform is debated at all levels of government and society, I think it is important to point out the financial value of poison centers.  It is conservatively estimated that the Illinois Poison Center saves $50 million dollars a year in health care costs, or about $12 for every dollar spent on providing poison center services to Illinois.  Not bad for a not-for profit with a $4.4 million dollar budget! Read more »

Top 5 Things You Didn’t Think Could be Poisonous to Children

Half of the calls received by the IPC involve kids under the age of 6.  Young children are naturally curious and explore their environments by touching and putting things into their mouths.  They learn by imitation, their taste buds are immature and they do not understand cause and effect.  Plus they are just small, so in many cases it doesn’t take much to overwhelm their little systems.  The IPC recommends keeping all potentially harmful substances away from children, because just about anything can be a poison in the right amount.  The following 5 things are in many households and it may surprise you that they can be so harmful. Read more »

Best wishes for a food poisoning free holiday season

How to prevent food poisoning over the holidays:

It is one a.m., a house full of out-of-town holiday guests and to everyone’s dismay, there is a line for the bathroom as several family members suddenly develop vomiting and diarrhea.  Not the picture of holiday bliss, especially when mom says it was the turkey, or the cream puffs, or maybe it was the left over Chinese food.  Well, maybe your mom wouldn’t start placing blame, but I know mine would. Read more »

Welcome to the Illinois Poison Center Blog

An Introduction to the Illinois Poison Center Blog:

Welcome to the first post of the Illinois Poison Center blog site!  I must be honest, in medical school I never thought I would be writing an internet blog, probably because Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet and blogs did not exist.  A lot has changed in the past 20 plus years.  With the tremendous growth in the internet and social media, the ability to communicate in the blogosphere has taken off with mommy blogs, daddy blogs, political blogs, community blogs, health-related blogs and others.  There are those who may ask “Does the world really need another blog, especially a poison center blog?”  I would have to answer with an unequivocal “yes”.

The Illinois Poison Center provides a variety of services and programs that encompass health care, public health education and research.  Through this blog, we will generate a dialogue, a conversation, with everyone interested in decreasing the harm of poisoning in their family, community or in the patients they treat.

We will have stories, articles, news you can use, interesting poisoning cases, and information and education on how to make your home and community safer. Read more »