OBJECTIVE: Preliterate children may be poisoned because they fail to distinguish safe versus hazardous household products. METHODS: Study 1: A total of 228 children aged 18-54 months completed four tasks assessing ability to recognize product safety. Study 2: A total of 68 children aged 17-31 months chose products to drink from pairs of dangerous versus beverage bottles. Study 3: A total of 119 children aged 18-42 months sorted 12 objects into toys, things you can drink, and things that are bad/dangerous. RESULTS: Left alone, children frequently touched dangerous household products. Children frequently misidentified poisonous products as safe. Some developmental trends emerged. The following packaging features apparently helped children recognize danger: black bottle color; opaque packaging; salient symbols like insects; lack of pointy spouts; squared, not round, bottles; and metal, not plastic, containers. CONCLUSIONS: Developing cognition helps preliterate children distinguish safe from dangerous household products. Multiple aspects of product packaging may reduce child poisoning risk if implemented by industry or policy.
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Schwebel et al. (2014) studied this question.
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