Children and Chemicals – a Dangerous Mix

How many of us here are guilty of wanting a clean home? Or a clean classroom for our children? Or even a clean car? Please raise your hands. I am hoping that all of you raised your hands and said I do I do. Keeping the areas that your children live in and frequent clean and as germ-free as possible is an obsession of just about every parent I know. We use hand sanitizer every time we touch or think we may have touched something and we use sanitizing wipes to wipe down every surface that our kids touch and then we wipe down our kids. It’s a never ending cycle. The bottom line being that we want our kids areas clean. There is nothing wrong with having these areas clean but aside from living in a bubble, this means that you are going to have to clean and this inevitably means using some form of chemical or chemicals and that is where the danger starts.

According to Yahoo Health and Wellness, more than 7 million accidental poisonings occur each year and 75% of those involve children under age 6. Injuries vary from minor such as itching or irritation to more severe injuries such as breathing difficulties, internal injuries and sometimes even death. Household poisonings typically involve medicines, household products and cosmetics that were left out, unlocked and easily accessible. Some of the packaging and labels on these products is very close in color and animation to some of the foods our kids love to eat and is many times confused as a snack or drink when it is in fact a chemical such as glass cleaner. The whole key to trying to avoid these terrible situations is prevention. A little planning now can make all the difference later.

Some Poison Prevention Tips:

• Keep medicines and chemicals out of sight and reach of children, preferably in a locked cupboard or childproof chemical lock box.
• Wherever possible, buy products in child resistant containers
• Always store chemicals in their original containers
• Dispose of unwanted medicines and chemicals safely
• Never store chemicals near Food to avoid possible confusion.
• Write this down and memorize it: Poison Control 1-800-222-1222

What if I am unsure about what has happened and need help? I will tell you what I tell everyone who has a “what if” question about injuries. Call 911. The dispatchers can help you while the emergency crew is on the way and may even be in contact with poison control at the same time.

Kids are naturally curious and explore every nook and cranny of their homes and will unfortunately find anything you have left lying about or unlocked. While we cannot stop every injury from household items we can lessen the blow by spending some time on prevention and educating our children as to what is safe and what is not.

Erin’s Law: Teaching Children to Recognize & Avoid Sexual Abuse

In October, New York State announced it would join the ranks of those states to introduce a bill entitled Erin Merryn’s Law. The measure would require schools to make a change to their existing curriculum for child abduction to include child sexual abuse prevention. This alteration would give critically important information to victims – many of whom do not know there is a way out of their horrific situation. As a child, Merryn was abused by both a neighbor and a family member. She says she stayed silent due to a combination of threats from her abusers, and the lack of knowledge about available help.  If passed, New York would become the third state to enact Erin Merryn’s law, following Missouri and Merryn’s home state of Illinois.

In light of recent events at our nation’s universities, parents should continue to be vigilant about teaching child sexual abuse prevention in the home. By age three, children should be taught that their bodies have private parts and no one is to touch those parts (with the necessary medical and hygiene exceptions). Of course children should be taught the correct terminology for their body as nicknames can be confusing and delay a disclosure. The following are some tips that are often overlooked:

1. When someone tickles a child, if the child says No, all tickling should cease. Children need to know that their words have power and No means No.
2. Teach children that it is OK to say No to an adult. Without permission from you, many children may be reluctant to do so even if the adult is doing something that makes them feel uncomfortable.
3. Teach children that all of these lessons apply to other children as well. If another child is touching your child in a way that makes him or her uncomfortable, teach your child to say No, get away and tell someone.
4. Be careful with the language you use when speaking with children. Avoid saying things such as “Have a good day and do everything your teacher tells you to do.” Children are very literal and need to be told that they should not listen to someone who is telling them to do something that might be harmful to them or to someone else.
5. Let your child decide how they want to express affection. If they do not want to hug or kiss Grandpa goodbye or sit on Santa’s lap, do not force them. You take away their power over their own body if you force them to be demonstrative in their affection. Children need to be taught their body belongs to them.
6. Teach children to respect the privacy of others. They should learn to knock on doors that are shut before opening them and close the door to the bathroom when they are using it. If they learn to respect the privacy of others, they may be more likely to recognize that an invasion of their privacy could be a red flag meaning danger.
7. Use your poker face. Encourage your child to come you if they have questions about anything. Avoid looking shocked or embarrassed by the question. Children who sense their parents’ discomfort will be less inclined to approach the parent next time he or she has a question.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys is sexually abused by age 18 in the United States. 93% of the abuse happens at the hands of those entrusted with the care and protection of the child. With the passage of Erin Merryn’s Law, critical information will reach every child in New York State.

Is your state advocating for the welfare of children?

Is The Inside of Your Car Making Your Family Sick?

Far too many of us treat our cars like second homes: We eat, drink, spill things and create piles of clutter inside.

But stop and think about it. When was the last time you really gave your car a thorough cleaning on the inside? And think back to the last time you hopped into your car with a bad cold and sneezed, spreading germs throughout your car’s cabin. Did you bother to wipe down surfaces afterwards? Didn’t think so.

Germs run rampant all around us, including the inside of our automobiles. Fortunately, there’s much you can do to keep those pesky lil’ microbes in check. Here are some tips from the country’s leading germ experts on how to sanitize your ride’s interior.

Daily Wipe-downs

“When you and your kids get in your car, you inevitably come into contact with surfaces covered with germs,” says Donna Duberg, assistant professor of clinical laboratory science at Saint Louis University’s Doisy College of Health Sciences. “Then you touch your eyes, nose and mouth. That’s how little germies from unclean surfaces make their way into our bodies.”

Stay healthy by wiping down the frequently-touched areas with a disinfectant, such as a sanitizing or disinfecting wipe, that kills viruses and bacteria (you may have to read the fine print on the label to be sure.) Look for a wipe that does not contain bleach – some have “bleach-free” right on the label – so you can use them to clean hard, nonporous surfaces like steering wheels, dashboards, knobs, chrome accents, door handles and even mirrors.

Make wiping down the inside of your vehicle part of a daily routine during cold and flu season and especially when someone in your family has been sick.

Meals on Wheels

We are becoming a nation of families eating on the go – most often in our cars. Inevitably, food particles end up on the vehicle’s upholstery, floor, seat belts, steering wheel and knobs. These crumbs are a breeding ground for bacteria, which love a warm, dark and moist environment.

Vacuum what you can with a hand-held portable vac after returning home from any outing where you or the kids were eating in the car. “Then wipe down surfaces with a disinfectant wipe and dry them completely to eliminate any lingering moisture,” says Philip Tierno, M.D., Ph.D., director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University School of Medicine and the author of The Secret Life of Germs. “Failing to do so allows organisms like mold to grow, which can make you and your children sick,” warns Tierno.

Sanitizer at the Ready

Once you get into the habit of wiping surfaces and vacuuming food spills in your car, why not attack the main entry point for germs into your car – your hands.

Hand sanitizers should be kept in every single vehicle, advises Duberg. After you use the handle at the gas pump or press the buttons on the ATM, your hands are covered with germs from the people who touched these surfaces before you.

So after touching commonly used surfaces, apply a hand sanitizer to avoid passing germs onto the surfaces inside your car. Go with sanitizers that contain at least 60 percent alcohol concentration. Look at the list of active ingredients for ethyl alcohol, ethanol, isopropanol or another variation. Apply to all parts of the hands (palms, nails, knuckles) and continue to rub your hands together until they are completely dry.

Car Seat Care

Little ones can equal big messes in the car – bottle spills, leaky diapers, unidentifiable crumbs. Luckily, the majority of child safety seats are made from fabric that can be removed and washed. A recent study conducted by Charles P. Gerba, Ph.D., professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona and a leading authority on germs, found that car seats often have bacteria on them – and enough to make a child sick with an ear infection or strep throat.

And that’s not all. They also typically have some mold growth, which can be particularly worrisome if you or your child suffers from allergies or asthma. Gerba suggests washing your child safety seat cover a few times per month.

He also recommends wiping down the plastic shell and harness of the child safety seat with water and a mild soap on a weekly basis – or more often if your child is sick. Between washings, be sure to vacuum or shake out the car seat as often as possible to remove food droppings.

How can a child drown without being in the water???

Do you remember the story about the boy in South Carolina who died of dry drowning last summer? My first thought was ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing…’, the response echoed by most parents I talked to as that frightening story made it’s way around the neighborhood grape-vine. I’ve been working on drowning prevention for a couple of years now, so I know all the scary statistics – that drowning is the second leading cause of death in children in virtually all developed countries, that it happens fast and silently and frequently at home – in the pool, the bath, a bucket. The idea that you could drown without being in the water, up to 24-hours later, was really frightening to me so I did a little research to find out more, the excellent web-site http://children.webmd.com was especially helpful.

Dry drowning is drowning without water – or more specifically, drowning 1-24 hours after a small amount of water has entered the lungs. Too much water and you have the drowning we all recognize, less and you have dry drowning. So, when should you be worried about dry drowning? First and foremost, watch your kids when they are in the water. Drowning can happen in as little as 2 minutes of being unsupervised – that’s faster than you can run to the restroom, catch up with your friend on the phone, handle a crisis in the nearby sandpit or grab yourself a caffeinated drink from the snack bar. If someone comes up sputtering and coughing, keep an eye on them and if that coughing continues for more than a few minutes, or it just doesn’t seem right to you, you should call a doctor. Same for shortness of breath or complaining of chest pain – though I’m guessing that with young kids that may come out as ‘my tummy hurts’, since they are a bit fuzzy on anatomy. Keep an especially close eye on kids with asthma, they are more susceptible. If your child is disoriented or lethargic, or if your parenting instincts are saying ‘this just isn’t right’, best to get them to an emergency doctor right away. I’m not a doctor either, when in doubt always get a professional opinion.

So how can kids get in trouble? Certainly all the obvious ways that kids get a mouthful of water – dunking, water fights, going off a fast slide and getting momentarily disoriented. Far less obvious is the young child who can’t swim or any child that is not a confident swimmer – they may have just taken in too much water even if they were never out of their depth.

The best thing to do? Teach your children water safety from infancy. Get your kids in swimming lessons from toddler-age onwards – swimming and water sports should be fun, healthy, life-long skills. Learn CPR. And most important, watch them like a hawk whenever they are in the water – 2 minutes can be the difference between life and death.

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Safe Sizer Choking Prevention Plate – Our Story and Giveaway

I’m David Zak, the inventor of the Safe Sizer™ choking prevention plate and the dad of 3 beautiful kids aged 2 to 8. Now, I don’t consider myself an overprotective parent. When my kids are playing I don’t rush to them every time they fall down. But I do worry about the big things. Those potentially fatal but very preventable “accidents” that can happen so easily if you’re not careful. Choking on food is one of those things.

When my oldest was beginning to eat solid foods, I knew I was supposed to cut it up into really small pieces to reduce his risk of choking. But I was always asking myself “How small is small?” I should also mention that I’m a former engineer, and I simply needed a little more precision than “small”.

So, I did some research. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 75 children under the age of 14 die in the US every year from choking on food and about 7,500 are treated in emergency rooms. These are senseless and preventable tragedies. Additionally, the CDC data shows children under 2 years have the highest rates of choking deaths in this group, but children up to 4 years are still particularly vulnerable because they lack a full set of teeth.

I also found a recommendation regarding food size to reduce the risk of choking. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children younger than 4 years old not be fed any round, firm food unless it is cut into pieces no larger than one-half inch in any direction.

You think you know how small one-half inch is until you start trying to cut up pieces of food to that size. It’s smaller than you think. At least, it’s smaller than we thought. And, my wife Susie and I thought, maybe this is smaller than most people would expect. If most people have even heard of this guideline…and it’s pretty important. Nobody we knew had, and we thought they should.

As I thought about how to get this information out to more people, I kept coming back to the small objects test cylinder developed by the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). The cylinder’s purpose is to show parents what objects are too small to give a child under 3 because it could block the child’s windpipe. If a toy fits in the cylinder than it fails. As a matter of fact, if a toy fails this test it is required to have a label on its packaging stating it is a potential choking hazard. So why not a test cylinder for food?

But food is a little different. You want it to be swallowed, so here smaller is better. But there is one big advantage with food that I thought would make a test cylinder idea work even better than it does for toys. Food is typically served in pretty standard ways. There’s usually either a plate or a placemat or a tray or some other type of tableware. So a food test cylinder could always be right in front of you if it was built into the tableware itself.

So I invented the Safe Sizer™ .  It is a ½ inch diameter ring that could potentially be put anywhere and on anything on which children can be served food, in order to:

1. inform those who don’t know about the one-half inch size recommendation
2. remind those who do to follow it at the exact place and time when they need the reminder
3. provide a test gauge to accurately measure bite sizes to one-half inch or less

After striking out multiple times trying to convince some large manufacturers of children’s tableware that the Safe Sizer™  was a good idea, Susie and I decided we would just do it ourselves. We formed a company and called it Midwest Monkeys® after our 3 monkeys who were all born in the Midwest. We live in Albuquerque now so it was also a way of bringing a piece of our personal history with us.

Over the next year and a half we joined the major industry group, the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA), met a great product designer, developed, tested, and finally produced our first product that incorporated the Safe Sizer™ feature. We designed a set of three colorful melamine plastic plates with a 3-dimensional raised ring version of the Safe Sizer™  built right into the plate. To use the 3-dimensional Safe Sizer™  feature on the plates, the parent or grandparent or babysitter or any caregiver serving a child a meal simply places a piece of cut up food inside the raised ring, turns it to ensure the piece fits in every direction without going over the sides, and then hands over the plate to the child..

While we could have put the Safe Sizer™  feature on any number of different tableware, the plastic plate made the most sense. It is probably the most commonly used serving dish for kids and plastic allowed us to mold the feature right into plate making it permanent. By using melamine plastic, we also got a very durable, dishwasher safe, and food safe plastic. Lastly, we tested at the CPSIA accredited Intertek Labs to ensure that the Safe Sizer™  plates were fully compliant with the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008). They  meet or exceed all standards for lead, phthalates, and melamine plastics.

The Safe Sizer™  choking prevention plates have been available since January 2009 and the response has been wonderful. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from parents about how their kids don’t want to use any other plate and how they love putting food in the Safe Sizer™ to show their parents that the food is the right size! We’ve been mentioned in numerous articles, on TV, and in mom blogs. We’re particularly proud of the awards we’ve won including iParenting Media, The National Parenting Center, PTPA (Parent Tested, Parent Approved), and Creative Child Magazine. But what we’re most proud of is that maybe we’ll help prevent one of those 75 kids and their parents from suffering a senseless tragedy.

HEALTHFUL HINTS

Choking Prevention Guidelines

Here are some great guidelines on food choking prevention from the American Academy of Pediatrics. I would encourage all parents and caregivers to look at their site (Parenting Corner Q&A: Choking Prevention) for more information.

1. Always supervise your children while eating
2. Insist that kids are sitting while eating. No walking, running, playing, or lying down.
3. Avoid the foods that kids most commonly choke on: hot dogs, nuts & seeds, chunks of meat & cheese, whole grapes, hard or gooey or sticky candy, popcorn, chunks of peanut butter, raw vegetables, raisins, and chewing gum.
4. Cut food for infants and young children into pieces no larger than one-half inch, and teach them to chew their food well

***Introducing our: ”SAFE SIZER PLATES FOR FEWER CHOKING KIDS” Giveaway!***

The Prize:  

For  3 winners: you may each choose your favorite 2 plates  *PLUS*  a wildcard (1 extra winner) – see below for details

And here’s how it works:

Below you will find a PEDIATRIC SAFETY CONTEST ENTRY FORM. It includes 2 MANDATORY entries for the contest as well as the opportunity for you to enter BONUS entries…

For simplicity (and so that you can tweet multiple times) you can use this form for each entry, however you must fill out a separate form for each entry for it to count!

How to enter:

For your Mandatory Entry: You MUST do these 2 things FIRST or no other entries will count!

1. We at Midwest Monkeys need your help. We’re trying to make some improvements to our website but we’re not really sure where to start. So please go to our site, come back here and tell us on the form below what you’d suggest we do to make the site better. We’re looking for real suggestions that show us you’ve actually gone to the site….plus…we have a surprise for you…the BEST suggestion will win our “wildcard prize”…a single plate of your choice in addition to the ones we already mentioned – and we’re choosing this winner! (1 entry)
2. Tell us which 2 plates you like best so we know which ones to send when YOU WIN (1 entry)

For your Bonus entries:

1. Follow @pediatricsafety on twitter and tweet the following: “I just entered a SafeSizer Choking Prevention Plate Giveaway @PediatricSafety http://bit.ly/mcrTp 3 winners! Safer kids! Great Idea!” 

OR “Toddlers need to eat food in pieces <1/2″. SafeSizer plates make that easy! http://bit.ly/mcrTp Giveaway w/ 3+ winners RT @PediatricSafety” (you may tweet both: 1 entry for each per day)

2. Blog about our story and giveaway on your own site and link to this post http://bit.ly/mcrTp. (2 entries – please submit 2 forms)
3. Join the Pediatric Safety community using the “Join our Community” button.  (4 entries – please submit 4 forms)

**CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR 4 WINNERS **

Our 3 Main Contest Winners – Win 2 Plates Each:

1. Traci Fritz #62 – with a Bonus Entry:  joined the Pediatric Safety site
2. Stephanie Clark #77 – with a Mandatory Entry #1: website suggestion
3. Katrina Brandenburg #31 – with a Mandatory Entry #2: which 2 plates she wanted if she won

Our Wildcard Winners – Wins Their Choice of Plate for the Most Helpful Website Suggestion

• Kristen Chumley – I think the theme should be circles. Maybe you could make the navbar circles instead of a single rectangle. Show the 3 styles of plates and when you scroll over them, there could be a zoom feature for users to check out the safe sizer. Another idea would be to have a video demonstation so people could see how useful it is to get a visual guide of 1/2″.

Contest Rules:

Giveaway is open to USA and Canada readers only. Giveaway ends at noon EST Friday Sept 11, 2009. Please fill out a separate form for each entry with your name and a valid email address so we can make sure each entry gets counted. You will have 48 hours to email pediatricsafety.net if you win. 3 winners chosen using random.org for the main prizes; 1 winner chosen by Midwest Monkeys for the wildcard prize. Good Luck to all entrants!