By SubstanceCough & Cold

Keeping Your Family Safe Around Medicine

Today there are more medicines in the home than ever before, and this increases the potential risk to children of accidental medicine poisoning.   Every year, more than 59,000 young children are seen in emergency rooms because they got into medicine while a caregiver wasn’t looking.  Almost every minute of...

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A Word of Caution As You Treat the Flu

What do a lot of people do when they feel achy and are running a fever? They go straight to the medicine cabinet for an over-the-counter (OTC) medicine. While OTC drugs can be helpful in controlling flu symptoms, it is easy to overdose on one very commonly available drug. Acetaminophen...

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What’s The Story On Children’s Over The Counter Cough and Cold Medicines?

If you’re a parent, chances are you’ve given your little ones cold medicine when they’re sick.  Now the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] is considering changing the labels on these medicines and the companies that make the most popular brands are already pulling them off the shelves.  Problems associated...

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Scholastic Develops a Program to Teach Tweens About Medication Safety

In 2011, poison centers managed over 140,000 cases of medicine poison exposures involving children ages 6 to 19. An estimated 58,546 emergency department visits were caused by adolescents self-administering medications, and 33.9 percent of these visits resulted from an overdose of OTC medications – about 10,000 per year. Scholastic, in partnership...

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