Preventing poisoning: from dishwasher tablet to button battery

Small hands, everything in the mouth

Babies and toddlers explore the world with their mouths; that is not naughtiness but a developmental phase. This is exactly why children under five top the statistics of the Dutch National Poisons Information Centre, which processes many thousands of reports about young children every year. The vast majority of those incidents happen at home, with products found in every household: cleaning products, medicines, laundry detergent and cosmetics. The typical age is one to three years, precisely the phase in which a child is mobile enough to reach everything but has no concept yet of what is edible. The reassurance: the great majority of exposures end well. The lesson: nearly all of them could have been prevented with better storage, and a few categories genuinely deserve your full attention.

The top five risk products at home

Five categories together account for most reports involving young children. Number one is cleaning products: all-purpose cleaner, bleach, descaler and above all the brightly coloured laundry capsules that look like sweets and squirt concentrated detergent into the mouth and eyes when bitten. Number two is medicines, from paracetamol to sleeping pills and the vitamins sold as cheerful gummies. Then come cosmetics and care products such as nail polish remover and essential oils, cigarettes and especially e-cigarette liquid of which a small amount of nicotine is already dangerous, and finally dishwasher tablets, which often sit in a drawer at child height right next to the dishwasher. What these products have in common: they are rarely locked away, because adults use them daily. Child-resistant caps help, but the name is misleading; they are child-delaying, not child-proof, and a determined toddler sometimes needs only a few minutes.

Button batteries and magnets: small but life-threatening

One category deserves its own section, because the consequences are so disproportionately severe: the button battery. These flat little batteries sit in remote controls, kitchen scales, bicycle lights, musical greeting cards and countless toys. If a swallowed button cell lodges in the oesophagus, electrolysis causes severe internal burns within two hours, even if the battery appears empty. This is not a wait-and-see situation: if you suspect a swallowed button battery, go straight to the emergency department and do not let your child eat or drink. The same applies to small super-strong magnet balls: two swallowed magnets pull intestinal walls together and cause perforations. Check all toys to see whether the battery compartment is secured with a screw, tape up loose remote controls if necessary, and store spare batteries as carefully as you store medicines.

Medicines: including grandma and grandpa's

Medicine poisonings in toddlers follow a predictable pattern, and the pill strip in your own bathroom cabinet is only part of the story. Just as often the danger comes from a visitor's handbag: grandma's heart medication or blood pressure tablets are at toddler height the moment the bag is placed on the floor or the sofa, and precisely those drugs can be dangerous to a small child in a single tablet. Make it a habit to put visitors' bags up high immediately, and tell overnight guests where they can safely store their medicines. Also watch out for packaging that is deliberately made attractive: vitamin gummies, fruit-flavoured effervescent tablets and syrups. Children make no distinction between those and sweets, and a jar of gummies is empty in no time. Keep all medicines, including the innocent-looking ones, in one lockable cabinet up high, and after visitors leave, do a quick check that nothing was left behind on side tables or nightstands.

Plants, alcohol and other quiet residents

Besides the obvious chemicals there is a category that is easily forgotten because it is simply on display. Several popular houseplants are poisonous when ingested or release irritating sap, including the dieffenbachia, philodendron and ZZ plant; put them up high or give them away for the first few years, and outside watch out for yew and laburnum. Alcohol is a classic after a birthday party or drinks: half-full glasses on the coffee table are within reach and interesting to a toddler, and small amounts of alcohol can already cause dangerously low blood sugar in a child. So clear away glasses immediately, even in the middle of a party. Also think of lamp oil and barbecue lighter fluid, which look like lemonade because of their colour, of cigarettes and nicotine pouches in coat pockets, and of e-cigarette refill bottles. The pattern is always the same: what is self-evident decor to you is something new to taste for a toddler.

How to store it safely

• •High and locked: child-resistant caps only delay, so always combine height with a lock
• •Move cleaning products from under the sink to a high or locked cupboard
• •Keep all medicines and vitamins in one lockable medicine cabinet up high
• •Check battery compartments for screws and store button cells and magnets like medicines
• •Put visitors' bags up high immediately and clear away glasses containing alcohol at once
• •Keep products in their original packaging; never decant anything into a bottle or jar that looks like a drink

If it goes wrong anyway: call, do not induce vomiting

If your child has swallowed something despite everything, or you are not sure, the first minutes count and what you do NOT do counts most. Never make your child vomit: corrosive substances would damage the oesophagus a second time, and liquids can end up in the airways. Do not automatically give milk or water either, because with some substances that makes it worse. Grab the packaging and call your GP immediately, or the out-of-hours GP service outside office hours; they will consult the National Poisons Information Centre if needed, which can tell doctors exactly how dangerous the combination of substance, amount and your child's weight is. If your child is drowsy, short of breath or unconscious, call 112 immediately. In case of contact with skin or eyes, rinse thoroughly with lukewarm water. And always keep the label or bottle, even if it is empty: the exact composition determines the treatment.

The kitchen and bathroom as hotspots

Two rooms deserve a separate check, because habit and hazard collide most strongly there. In the kitchen, the cupboard under the sink is the classic mistake: at exactly crawling height, washing-up liquid, dishwasher tablets, drain unblocker and bleach stand neatly side by side. Move them to an overhead cupboard or fit a sturdy cabinet lock on the sink cupboard, and do the same with the cupboard holding bin bags and waste paper, because empty packaging with residue ends up there. In the bathroom the same applies to the shelf and the edge of the bath: mouthwash, nail polish remover and shaving foam sit there at the eye level of a child in the tub. Use the kitchen and bathroom checklists in this app to work through this room by room. One locked cupboard per room for everything chemical works best in practice: it is a single action to open, so you will keep it up even when you are in a hurry.

Routine is the best protection

Poisoning prevention does not stand or fall with one big tidy-up but with what you do daily afterwards. Put new products in the right place immediately, only place the dishwasher tablet in the machine at the moment it closes, visitors' bags up high as standard, and every few months a round through the kitchen and bathroom at crawling height. Put the phone numbers of your GP and the out-of-hours service in your phone AND on the fridge, so a babysitter has them to hand too. Know that the vast majority of incidents end well, especially when people act quickly and correctly. And remember the two exceptions where you never wait and see: button batteries and magnets always mean going straight to the emergency department. With a few fixed habits you make the chance that you will ever have to make that trip as small as possible.