THAT LITTLE JOINT COULD KILL YOUR CHILD, MD SAYS

It's not only those pills in the bathroom cabinet that could kill
your child -- it could also the pot left out after a party, Dr. Anna
Jarvis told delegates at the 85th annual conference of the Canadian
Pediatric Society in Victoria. "Small children when they're learning
to walk, they explore their world with their mouths, and universally
small children put things in their mouths," said Jarvis, a University
of Toronto pediatrics professor, at the Victoria Conference Centre yesterday.

In a plea to encourage parents to secure a wide range of household
products, cosmetics and medications, Jarvis said parents "cannot
predict what their child will decide to explore."

With a nod to those living in the West Coast, Jarvis told
pediatricians the most deadly killers and poisonous substances for
children are found not only in parents' and grandparents' medicine
cabinets and under kitchen counters, but also in personal stashes of
mood-altering substances.

"More people these days use a little pot," Jarvis said, explaining
alcohol has almost become more of a "dirty word." For that reason,
parents and caregivers must be as vigilant about protecting
youngsters from baggies of marijuana or illicit drugs as the liquor cabinet.

Jarvis, who also works in the emergency department of the Hospital
For Sick Children in Toronto, said she has seen children come into
hospital having ingested methadone, cocaine and hash brownies, among
others -- but also having eaten their grandparents' heart medication,
eaten mom's cosmetics or having licked cold rubs off their own bodies.

"Kids will say 'yuck' to vegetables but they'll eat all of these
things," Jarvis quipped.

Jarvis said there's good news in the fact that child-proof caps and
bubble packs for pills are having a dramatic positive effect in
curbing what was most the most common forms of poisoning.

She added, however, that in our aging society the use of child-proof
caps, if made mandatory for all pill bottles, would put seniors
suffering from arthritis in the impossible position of not being able
to get their medicine.

"Think of all the people living over 80 years of age, it would be
wrong to make life more difficult for our senior citizens," Jarvis
said. "That's why I talked about education and advising parents
before there's a problem, about who is living in the home and what
might be available [to the child]."