Poison Control

Hey everyone I am back again with my second blog! I really hope you enjoyed reading about the center for disease control because now it’s time to learn about the center for poison Control! A poison control center is a medical facility that is able to provide immediate, free, and expert treatment advice and assistance over the telephone in case of exposure to poisonous or hazardous substances. Poison control centers answer questions about potential poisons in addition to providing treatment management advice about household products, medicines, pesticides, plants, bites and stings, food poisoning, and fumes. “More than 72% of poison exposure cases are managed simply by phone, greatly reducing the need for costly emergency room and doctor visits”. While poison control centers have traditionally provided expert consultations by telephone, on December 30, 2014 an online option was launched by a group of U.S. poison centers to meet the growing demand for accurate web-based health information… www.webPOISONCONTROL..org  is a free, confidential, online triage tool also available as a downloadable app. Based on age, weight and substance, it provides cases specific guidance for poison exposures  that can vary anywhere from single ingestion of medicines, to household cleaning products. The application uses ingredient based equations to create a recommendation including whether an emergency room visit or call to poison control is required. If it’s safe to stay home, then home treatment recommendations, specific symptoms to expect, and symptoms of greater concern that would require a call to poison control or a visit to an emergency room are shown.  The link to get to the website is here... http://webpoisoncontrol.org/The poison control center’s phone number is 1-800-222-1222. You can see this number here... http://1-800-222-1222.info/That is the number for the American Association Of Poison Control Centers I think it’s amazing that you are able to just call a number and they will be able to help you right away. Next up is age and gender distribution. 50.7 percent of poison exposures occur in children under the age of six. In children between ages 13 and 19, the majority of poison exposures (54.5 %) involve girls. In children under 13, the reverse is true, with the majority of these exposures involving boys. 89.6 percent of reported adolescent deaths from poison exposure were due to intentional poison exposure such as suicide or drug abuse. Over 70 percent of all poison fatalities occur in adults ages 20 to 59. While adults 60 and over account for just over 5 percent of poison exposures, they account for 16.3 percent of the fatalities. All of this information is crazy to think about. I for sure thought that most poison problems happened with adults.  I had no idea younger peoples were having such a hard problem with this.  The top route of poison exposure. The top route of exposure is either ingestion (eating or drinking), absorption (getting absorbed into your skin), Inhalation (Breathing it it), or Injection (something puncturing the body and the poison being inserted into it.) The most common forms of poison exposure are cosmetics and personal care products, cleaning products, and foreign bodies. I believe this is the case because children do not know any better and will try to eat anything they put their hands on. Also Teens are getting a hold of products and using them to get a sort of “high” or an attempt at suicide. Sometimes exposure is caused by stupidity from someone not knowing better, or accidental. Either way there is a poison control center that is here to serve and protect you! Thanks for reading, I’ll be back next week.

CDC and Public Tracking

Ok, so this is my first ever blog post. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet so bear with me. This blog is about the CDC (Center for Disease Control). More specifically about the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network is best defined as, a system of integrated health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state, and city sources. On the Tracking Network, you can view maps, tables, and charts with data about: chemicals and other substances found in the environment, some chronic diseases, and conditions about the area where you live .The main reason the site was created is so that an ordinary person can learn how the environment might affect a person's health and how people might affect the health of the environment. The site is very easy to navigate. Let me show you an example. The first thing you do is go to the CDC website.  Then go to National Environmental Health Tracking Network. Click Basic, then All, then any disease. Select indicator, select the measure of it, select whatever state you wish to see, and then you can put any date you want. Take pesticide related illnesses for example. With the click of a button I was able to look at how many major pesticide related illnesses were present in the United States in any year that I want. Example here... http://ephtracking.cdc.gov/QueryPanel/EPHTNQuery/EPHTQuery.html?c=-1&i=-1&m=-1  Not only could I do that I could also search in detail specific cases of related pesticide illnesses. The opportunities are endless with this website. This website could help an average Joe save someone’s life. With this resource you can do things that would take an occupational health worker days to research if they didn’t have access to this website. Take less developed countries for example. If there is an outbreak of cholera in a small 3^rd world village, they are going to be in really big trouble because they don’t have the resources of technology to access the CDC website which could in turn help stop the spread of the cholera disease and save some lives. The CDC website and The National Environmental Tracking network are very valuable resources for Occupational health workers, and even everyday people. Thanks for reading my first blog. I’ll be back next week. Let’s stay healthy!