Pesticide poisoning . . . A point
A common practice in India to
decrease the cost of purchase of many an item, sachets such as these are quite
a dangerous thing. Taken out from their original packing, these poisons are
repacked into unlabelled packets. I showed it to couple of our staff who use
pesticides for farming purposes. I asked them about the poison. They did not
have any idea other than that it was very good to kill houseflies.
The shiny substance inside the sachet is quite attractive for children. Many a time I've seen liquid pesticides repacked inside empty cough syrup bottles. Last year, we had one young man who claimed to have unknowingly drank Malathion which was stored inside a cough syrup bottle. He was lucky to have made it alive.
In the prevention of pesticide poisoning, one of the concepts being promoted is to ensure that purchase of pesticides be monitored and there is community based storage of pesticides. Of course it is important. However, more important is the need for public awareness not to store it outside their labelled bottles or sachets and not to sell or store pesticides in loose unlabelled packets.
Well, regarding the first patient, the lady - I got a history from her that she was having headache and she had taken some medicine which was given to her long ago. . . She does not remember anything after she took that medicine. My hunch is that she has taken some organophosphorus poison which was kept in an unlabelled bottle. In fact, we had got the history of a headache from the husband . . .from which we had kept the probability of a intracranial bleed - a pontine hemorrhage because of the pin point pupil . . .
So, any unconscious patient from now on . . . we would be looking at possibilities of poisoning seriously.
The shiny substance inside the sachet is quite attractive for children. Many a time I've seen liquid pesticides repacked inside empty cough syrup bottles. Last year, we had one young man who claimed to have unknowingly drank Malathion which was stored inside a cough syrup bottle. He was lucky to have made it alive.
In the prevention of pesticide poisoning, one of the concepts being promoted is to ensure that purchase of pesticides be monitored and there is community based storage of pesticides. Of course it is important. However, more important is the need for public awareness not to store it outside their labelled bottles or sachets and not to sell or store pesticides in loose unlabelled packets.
Well, regarding the first patient, the lady - I got a history from her that she was having headache and she had taken some medicine which was given to her long ago. . . She does not remember anything after she took that medicine. My hunch is that she has taken some organophosphorus poison which was kept in an unlabelled bottle. In fact, we had got the history of a headache from the husband . . .from which we had kept the probability of a intracranial bleed - a pontine hemorrhage because of the pin point pupil . . .
So, any unconscious patient from now on . . . we would be looking at possibilities of poisoning seriously.
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