At the California Poison Control System in San Francisco, a call has just come in from a mother whose toddler accidentally drank a stain remover called “Grandma’s Secret.”
“I’m not sure how much she had and whether I should take her to the hospital,” the mom says. “She’s acting like her normal self, but she has her ‘disgusted face’ on.”
“Got it,” says the operator. “So, most stain removers aren’t a problem — they’re detergent-based. With ingestion, mostly what you’ll see are mild effects, like an upset stomach or brief gagging or vomiting. Typically, the remedy is you wash out their mouth, give them some water or juice, and they’ll be absolutely fine.”
Just like that, crisis averted. It’s all in a day’s work for the poison center’s operators, the specially trained physicians, pharmacists and nurses at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Somebody comes into contact with something they shouldn’t, and a cry for help comes into the center’s 24/7 hotline (1-800-222-1222).
Raymond Ho, managing director of the California Poison Control System in San Francisco, shows off a collection of typical poisons — and antidotes — that are often the subject of hotline calls. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
The San Francisco office is one of four in California, with others in Sacramento, San Diego and the Fresno/Madera area. Together, they handle about 235,500 cases per year — roughly 650 a day or one every two minutes — involving everything from drug overdoses to rattlesnake bites, toxic plants and weirder things.
Californians poison themselves in ways that generally follow nationwide trends. In 2022, most poisoning cases in America involved (in order) painkillers, household cleaners, antidepressants, cosmetics and personal care products, with rising numbers for exposure to fentanyl and Delta-8 THC, a compound found in cannabis. Some 47% of those cases involved children, with those ages 3 and under accounting for a whopping 35% of all cases.
It’s important parents keep everything locked up because children can get into anything, says toxicology management specialist Ting Regelman. About once a month, there’s a case involving a child who ate a button battery, the type that powers small devices like car key fobs.
“They get stuck in the esophagus and are still inducing current,” says Regelman. “If you want to do an experiment at home, put one of those button batteries on a piece of ham and leave it for a few hours. You’ll see it’s eating through it — that’s why we send them to the hospital.”
“People call with all sorts of questions,” says managing director Raymond Ho. Much of it is drug-related — painkiller overdoses, for example, vomiting from psychedelic mushrooms or hallucinating from jimsonweed, made infamous in Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Tylenol overdoses are a big problem, and ever since cannabis was legalized, there are more and more calls about children getting into mommy’s gummies.
Then there are the Black Widow bites, Ivermectin and other drugs meant for large animals and the spicy “One …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
