☣️ Poison & Chemical Exposure Response
☣️ Poison & Chemical Exposure Response
The first ninety seconds after a poisoning are mostly about not making it worse, and most of the folk advice is actively dangerous. Find the substance, pick how it got in, and get the specific first steps, the specific things not to do, and a summary you can read out to whoever answers the phone.
- Never induce vomiting. Corrosives burn coming back up, and fuels get into the lungs instead.
- Never give anything by mouth to someone drowsy, confused or fitting. They will inhale it.
- Never mix cleaning products. Bleach plus an acid gives chlorine gas; bleach plus ammonia gives chloramine. Both are immediately dangerous to breathe.
- Never wait for symptoms. Some of the worst poisons here look completely fine for hours.
The three poisons that people get fatally wrong
Paracetamol. Someone can take a serious overdose, feel fine for a day, then develop liver failure that is untreatable by then. There is no safe "wait and see". Any suspected overdose means hospital immediately, even with no symptoms, and treatment works best within eight hours. The same is true for aspirin and for iron tablets, which are especially dangerous to small children.
A button battery. A lithium coin cell stuck in the gullet generates a current that burns straight through tissue, and it can perforate within two hours. This is one of the few genuine drop-everything emergencies. Multiple small magnets are the same story for a different reason: they attract each other across loops of bowel.
Fuels and oils. Petrol, paraffin, lamp oil, white spirit and turpene-rich essential oils are not very toxic to the gut — the danger is a tiny amount getting into the lungs, which causes chemical pneumonia hours later. That is exactly what vomiting delivers. Get to hospital; let them decide.