Personal care products send a child to the ER every 2 hours, study finds

Every two hours, seemingly harmless products like cologne, nail polish and remover, lotion, shampoo and makeup send a child to the hospital, a new report found.  

There's something undeniably cute about a child trying to act grown-up by spritzing themselves with cologne, or smudging mom's lipstick around their mouths. 

But getting into personal care products also leaves over 4,300 children under five poisoned or suffering chemical burns every year, a new Nationwide Children's Hospital study estimates.  

The report's authors are urging parents everywhere to keep their cosmetics and toiletries out of sight, out of reach, and in the containers they came. 

Their hope is that children won't be able to get to these products in the first place, but if they do, at least a picture on the package might signal to children that lotion is not, in fact, a tasty yogurt. 

And, worse comes to worst, parents will be able to identify what personal care product their child has mistakenly gotten into.  

Leaving shampoos, conditioners, lotions, colognes, powders and more out on a vanity or bathroom sink could give children a chance to eat, drink or incorrectly use the products, resulting in poisoning or injury and a trip to the ER, a new study suggests (file)

Leaving shampoos, conditioners, lotions, colognes, powders and more out on a vanity or bathroom sink could give children a chance to eat, drink or incorrectly use the products, resulting in poisoning or injury and a trip to the ER, a new study suggests (file) 

'When you think about what young children see when they look at these products, you start to understand how these injuries can happen,' said Rebecca McAdams, study co-author. 

'Kids this age can't read, so they don't know what they are looking at. They see a bottle with a colorful label that looks or smells like something they are allowed to eat or drink, so they try to open it and take a swallow.'

About 60 percent of the children that wound up in hospitals with personal care-related injuries were under two years old, so they were just learning to speak, and a long way off from being able to read.  

'When the bottle turns out to be nail polish remover instead of juice, or lotion instead of yogurt, serious injuries can occur,' McAdams added. 

Nail polish remover seems to be a favorite accidental drink for young children. 

Of all injuries - including skin exposures and poisonings - nail polish remover was responsible for over 17 percent of the total emergency room visits between 2002 and 2016. 

Nail care products collectively were the most common culprits of poisonings and chemical burns, accounting for 28.3 percent of injuries. 

But hair care products, according to the new study published in Clinical Pediatrics, are the most dangerous kind of cosmetics to children.  

This category of product was responsible for over 52 percent of serious injuries that

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