Since the COVID-19 crisis arrived in Texas, the North Texas Poison Center has seen a marked increase in calls from people looking for help over that past few months.
“We’ve seen a pretty significant rise in calls having to do with cleaners – having to do with disinfectants which makes a lot of sense considering we’re using a lot of those right now to clean our homes and stay safe. We have a lot more of those in our homes,” North Texas Poison Center Public Health Education Manager Cristina Holloway said. “Most of the calls that we are receiving are ingestions – meaning that someone has either swallowed, tasted or gotten something into their mouth.
Many of the calls to the Poison Center are about children and hand sanitizers.
“When we look at the number of ingestions that we have received calls on, the majority of them are involving children under the age of six,” Holloway said. “When we are looking at disinfectants, that’s where we are getting more calls involving adults. Also age 30 and older is where we are seeing a lot of calls.”
The emergency hotline 1-800-222-1222 is available 24 hours a day with poison specialist available to help.
“Historically with our numbers, we are able to keep a lot of people at home which is great especially now. None of us want to be in the hospital,” Holloway said. “None of us want to be in the ER. That’s the great thing you can call and stay at home and stay safe.”
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More information can be found at poisoncontrol.org.
*Map locations are approximate, central locations for the city and are not meant to indicate where actual infected people live.
