Bartell Drugs in Des Moines and Take Back Your Meds are offering resources to help local communities stay safe. From 3-5 p.m., on Saturday, March 26, Mr. Yuk will be passing out Mr. Yuk stickers to put on poisonous products at the Des Moines Bartell’s, 21615 Pacific Highway S.
As part of Poison Prevention Week, Bartells and Take Back Your Meds offers safety tips to Protect families from accidental poisoning.
Poisonings are the leading cause of accidental deaths in Washington, surpassing car crashes and falls. Poison Prevention Week is designed to reduce illnesses, injuries, and deaths due to poisonings; build safer communities; and reduce unnecessary health care costs.
Poison Prevention Tips
Children, teens, adults, seniors, and pets are all at risk for accidental poisonings. Here are a few tips from the American Association of Poison Control Centers to help Washington families to stay safe.
1. To protect children, put Mr. Yuck stickers on all poisonous products. Pick up the stickers at local Bartell’s or order them and other educational materials at http://www.wapc.org/educators/materials.htm to help educate your family, friends, co-workers, and local community groups such as Boy and Girl Scout Troops.
Dispose of unused, unneeded, or expired prescription drugs through safe medicine return programs. Proper disposal can help prevent accidental poisoning, overdoses, and drug addictions. Drop off unused medicines at local Bartell’s, or other take-back centers. For more locations, check out the Take Back Your Meds website at takebackyourmeds.org.
Follow directions on the label when you give or take medicines. Read all warning labels. Some medicines cannot be taken safely when you take other medicines or drink alcohol.
Turn on a light when you give or take medicines at night so that you know you have the correct amount of the right medicine.
Keep medicines in their original bottles or containers.
Monitor the use of medicines prescribed for children and teenagers, such as medicines for attention deficit disorder, or ADD.
Never share or sell your prescription drugs.
Keep opioid pain medications, such as methadone, hydrocodone, and oxycodone, in a safe place that can only be reached by people who take or give them.
Put the poison control number, 1-800-222-1222, on or near every home telephone and save it on your cell phone. In Washington state, the number routes to the Washington Poison Center. Specially-trained pharmacists, nurses and poison physicians respond to emergencies and answer questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week at no charge. All services are confidential.
National Poison Prevention Week is Mar 20-26. For more information, visit: www.poisonprevention.org.
Each year Washington spends: $16.2 million to hospitalize and treat children for unintentional poisonings from pain relievers and other medicines; $9.3 million for emergency room costs for kids who accidentally ingested pain relievers and other medicines; and $6.2 million in expenses related to accidental overdose deaths of children. This totals $31.7 million dollars. To help reduce poisonings, Washington state needs a statewide drug take back system to provide safer options for medicine returns. In addition to overdoses and accidental poisonings, unused medicines also pose other risks. Many people rinse unused medicine down the sink, or flush it down the toilet, and the drugs become environmental contaminates polluting our water and soil. Learn more at Take Back Your Meds at takebackyourmeds.org.
About Take Back Your Meds
Take Back Your Meds is a group of health organizations, police, drugstores, local governments, environmental groups, and others in Washington State who support medicine take-back programs to reduce access to highly-addictive drugs, reduce the risk of poisonings, and reduce environmental contamination. These organizations support legislation to create a secure, statewide medicine return program for unwanted medicines from households that is financed by pharmaceutical manufacturers, and that does not rely on state and local government funding.