Household products and poisoning.

The belief is widely held that many people are seriously poisoned, or injured, every year by household products.To ascertain the size of this problem we undertook two complementary investigations. Design of the studiesThe first study was based on inquiries to the London centre of the National Poisons Information Service between January 1974 and June 1975 about household cleaning and washing products (excluding polishes, spot cleaners, and cleaners for soft fabrics).During that period there were 28 928 inquiries: 8556 were concerned with household products in general and 1457 of these with cleaning and washing products.The records of the inquiries and data from follow- up questionnaires provided information about age of patient, manner of exposure, and symptoms in over 1200 of these cases.The second study, by contrast, collected information on all ingestion and eye accidents in the home.The population sample extended over 2018 housewives, recruited from a three-stage stratified random sample of households in Britain.A primary questionnaire was sent to each one to elicit whether, within the past year, (a) any children in the family under the age of 11 years had accidentally swallowed anything or (b) anyone in the family, regardless of age, had got anything in the eye.This initial appeal elicited 1745 replies: there were 138 instances of one or more accidental swallowings during the year by children within the specified age group.Another questionnaire was sent to all these 138 households with the object of identifying the product, the sex and age of the child, the circumstances of ingestion, and ensuing action (any symptoms, treatment, and outcome).In all there were 170 replies on ingestion incidents in these 138 households.Among the same 1745 first-stage replies there were 890 households in which there were one or more eye contacts during the year.Another questionnaire was therefore sent to each of these to gain further particulars, and these covered 1531 eye incidents in the 890 house- holds.