Radiolab - Poison Control

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Originally aired in 2018, this episode features reporter Brena Farrell as a new mom. Her son gave her and her husband a scare -- prompting them to call Poison Control. For Brenna, the experience was so odd, and oddly comforting, that she decided to dive into the birth story of this invisible network of poison experts, and try to understand the evolving relationship we humans have with our poisonous planet. As we learn about how poison control has changed over the years, we end up wondering what a place devoted to data and human connection can tell us about ourselves in this cultural moment of anxiety and information-overload. Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  

Hello, it's Lulu. You know that expression inside every person, there are two wolves fighting one of them feeds on darkness and despair and the other one feeds on light and hope and the one that will win is the one you feed more. But what I love about this next story, which is a rerun, is that the reporter in this has two wolves inside her.

One is a very worrying mother, and the other one is a very curious reporter. And she feeds both of them. She just feeds them both. And what results is this lovely story that takes you through a trap door in American society to a secret room where a bunch of migivery smart people

are holding things together for anyone who happens to call them. That's all I'm gonna say. Again, this is an older episode, a rerun. I think it was about seven years ago. So sit back, relax, and let's go. Yeah, wait, wait, you're listening. Okay.

All right. Okay. All right. Okay. You're listening. Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio. From WNYS. Hey! Hey!

Hey! Ree-y! Uh, hello! Hello! Prada Ferro! How are you? How are you? Oh my god.

Great. What? What? What? What? How are you? Oh my god. Great. What? I feel like I'm literally talking to another world.

I'm John. I'm Robert. This is Radio Lab. And today we are reconnecting with an old producer of ours, Brenna Farrell. Yeah. Past life. Oh, since leaving Radio Lab, she's been busy with work.

But also, raising two kids is crazy hard. With family. Just trying to like take my vitamins and like exist on a low grade panic attack. Go on day. Well, I guess we should start by, let's just try to recall like what it was that's, I don't even know how you bumped in. Like you don't normally. Okay, so back in 2015, my husband Nick and I were in our tiny apartment back in Brooklyn and we were

new parents. Our son, Marty, was 18 months old at the time. And one morning, I think it was about 5am, like still dark. Marty woke up and he was just crying, crying, crying. And so I tapped my husband. It was his turn to get up early and go get Marty. So he got out of bed. I fell right back to sleep.

And the next thing I knew, I was like, felt somebody tapping me and I sort of rolled over in my bed and there was just this little person looking up at me, covered at this greasy stuff. Oliver's face was shiny and he was laughing and he held up in his hand this giant jar of diaper ointment. The special medicated stuff that we had bought just that last week, and I just thought, oh my god, he just ate all this medicine,

and I have no idea how much he ate, and I look around at my husband who had gotten up with him, changed his diaper, and they put him down on the floor to play, because he was exhausted, fallen asleep in the chair while watching him. So, I just flung myself to the end of the bed, and I grabbed Marty in one arm and started frantically searching the label. Which was filled with words like petrolatum, serison, panthenol, glycerin, bizzabolol. But Brenna says she didn't register any of those words because right underneath that list of ingredients. I just saw this bold type that said, if swallowed, call your doctor or poison control center

immediately. And so I'm clutching my son and I'm clutching his jar and then I yelled to my husband to wake him up and I'm like, I need you to find the number and call poison control while I hold Marty. And so Nick snaps into action. Leaps off the chair into the other room. So he can make the call. And Brenna is left sitting there in the bed holding her 18-month-old son who is about to what, throw up, pass out, die? She's not sure. Like have you ever felt that hollow feeling where your whole chest just drops. And it feels like missing a step.

You're just utterly sick. And then just all sweaty up in my temple. So I'm sitting on the edge of our bed. Marys and my lap and I'm eagle I watching for whatever's about to start happening to him. And I had always heard that you have your mother's instinct or whatever that is. And moms know best and moms can tell

when something's wrong with their kid. like sometimes maybe that's true but for me Rennes says she just froze I was imagining like this huge like glob of ointment has worked its way down your esophagus and now what is it doing to your stomach lining and what's gonna happen when it like I was just like I can't take it back like what do I? So Nick has gone to the next room and I hear that he's on the phone with someone and then just moments later, he came back out and he said, well, that was the most pleasant phone call

I've had in ages. There he was, completely calm, kind of like smiling at me in the doorway, and I'm just still hunched over the bed, like hanging onto Marty, thinking, what is going on? So Nick, straightened up and then went into like, okay, here's what happened. I called. They immediately picked up. Brennan says that Nick told her, he talked to this man, the guy asked him super matter of fact, how much Marty weighed.

Nick told him 20 pounds or whatever. He asked then what brand of diaper ointment did Marty eat? Nick told him the brand. And then the guy did a little mental math and said, your child's gonna be fine. Totally fine. This was probably not a big deal at all. It was really common.

No vomiting, no nothing. Nope. He was just like a slippery little piglet at that point. So cleaned him up and then let him play. But for the rest of the day, I just kept thinking what the hell is poison control? I honestly didn't think we still lived in a world where you could just call a hotline. Like get on the telephone and talk to a live human who somehow knows everything about this one specific brand of diaper appointment and then bam like 45 seconds later this full-blown crisis in my mind was just gone and then I you know I just was having this weird moment of like There's this invisible network out there that was just kind of primed and waiting to help.

Who are these people? So a few months later, I'm totally obsessed with poison control. And I ended up in a skyscraper in downtown Chicago. Up 19 floors down these four twisty-turny quarters to the oldest poison control center in America When I got there in our staff, which there was some natural light Carol the senior director it took me on a tour It's a lot smaller than I would have expected No, it's not a dome, but it definitely is an office It was I you know, I think I was expecting like just banks of like high-tech gleaming

Computers and instead that phone hasn't worked in at least five years, but it's still there I think I was expecting just banks of high-tech gleaming computers. And instead, that phone hasn't worked in at least five years, but it's still there. It was this narrow office with great carpet. We have a crusty mushroom poster up there. Great cubicles. I don't know whose cubs hat that is, but it's been here for a while. The place reminds me of a basement college computer lab where all are kind of still running Windows 95 or something like that. And sitting in front of those computers,

where the Poison specialists. I'm the snake bite person. I love paneling snake bite calls. There's Aaron, who's in snakes. Like the little old lady who was like working at a backyard and there was a snake and she chops off his head with a shovel and then she brings a snake head into the ER to show them what bitter and there's Connie.

I'm sort of the go-to person for mushrooms. How I look at it. She takes mushroom calls even when she's on vacation. Is that true? Yes. And she gets excited about it. There's Cindy who used to work in the ER. I'm a nurse by background.

There's Jessica. Yeah, I take the home calls. There's art. I'm interested in all of it. It's all fun. And then, Bren is here. There's Tony.

Hi, Tony. How's it going? He's the expert in everything. Illinois Poison Center. I'm bringing Illinois Poison Center. And while I was there, the stream calls it was just non-stop. Bye-bye. As soon as one of them would hang up the phone. Poison Center. Illinois Poison Center. Another call would come in. Five. Normally healthy. Okay, gently wipe off this lips with a little warm water on a washcloth. Give them something to drink. They'll tell me that in order to work here, you need a background in medicine, special training, and toxicology on top of that, helps to have a good memory, good math skills.

But, you know, more importantly, what you really need is to be able to stay calm. I usually tell people they're gonna be overwhelmed by the first three months. Boys in the center? Because sometimes the call's, you know... Oh, glow stick is not going to be a problem. They're adorable. Oh gosh.

But other times... Oh boy. They're like this. He has a temperature of 104. This is an ER call. What was his sugar again? A hospital was calling about a male patient who had been found unconscious. Completely sweaty, diaphragmatic at home.

So the medics are assessing him as blood sugar was 40. His time at all is 372. His pupils, she said are bouncing all over the place. I don't know what that means. After she hung up, I asked Cindy if this was a self-harm call. It's believed to be yes. She was saying that his wife just died of cancer. Yeah.

Is that somewhat rare to get one that's serious? No, not at all. We get them all the time, at least, you know. Where's the center? Can you spell that? Can you spell the name of that drug? And how many milligrams did you say? I ended up spending about 12 hours there that day, and if you sit in a poison control center that long, you just... Poison center?

These calls are washing over, they're just coming and coming and coming. Poison center? You start to feel just kind of... What's your child doing? ...overwhelmed by the fact that every single time the phone rings... How many times you see vomit? There's somebody on the other side of the line, and they're in a moment of uncertainty. just kind of overwhelmed by the fact that every single time the phone rings, there's somebody on the other side of the line and they're in a moment of uncertainty or panic. Why did she take the Tylenol overdose?

Crisis. This could be pretty serious. And the scale of that is just kind of shocking. We manage 80,000 calls a year out of this room. And that's just this one center. That's just Chicago. If you take the poison centers all across the country, they handle almost 3 million cases a year.

So you get a call like mine, or much worse, about every 14 seconds or so. You know, this is a very poisonous planet. And thinking about just how many of us are bumping into these things that we think might be poisoning us. Or snuck, mercury. Our poisoning us. Gold is poisonous to some extent. So if our not-so-poisonous, but it'll turn you blue, I decided to call up Deborah Blum, director of the Night Science Journalism Program at MIT, and poison enthusiast. I love poison, it's true.

Even wrote a book called The Poisoners Handbook. My husband worries about that a lot. In fact, he has not let me pour him a cup of coffee for the last six years since my book came out. Are you serious? No, seriously. He's always like, oh, I'll get it. He ever says it helps to kind of think of poison control as part of this much larger back and forth. Kind of a dance and evolving dance that we've been doing with our poisonous planet for thousands of years. We've been dancing with them in different ways for a very long time.

If you go back and look at the hieroglyphics in Egypt, there's actually references to death by peach. And that refers to cyanide poison, because cyanides are the primary poise and then the pits of peach is fine. Death by peach is actually written in a wall of a temple somewhere or a tomb. That's exactly right. And Debra says, if you go back to the beginning of that dance, you'll find that like with so many things, it starts with murder.

Because we humans first got really interested in poisons when we realized we could use them to kill each other. And one of my favorite examples is actually arsenic, which in early 19th century Europe was by all accounts, the perfect common cytol poison. It was tasteless, it was odorless, you could put it into vanilla pudding or oatmeal. It mimicked a natural illness, gee, it kinda looked like they had a bad gastroenteritis, and at the time we had no way of detecting it. Literally, when we come into the 19th century,

science has not figured out a way to detect a single poison in a corpse. Well, so what ruined this perfect murder? Well, there was a chemist in Britain named James Marsh who worked out this incredibly, it's, I mean, by the standards today, primitive test, which involved mincing up the tissue from the dead person and adding some acid and heating it

up and distilling it and then as this vapor comes out it cools onto glass and if there was any arsenic in the original tissue that arsenic forms tiny dark crystals and you got a sort of blackish silver mirror forming over the glass. And that was actually the first great test in forensic toxicology, the marsh test. This is sort of the moment, Deborah says, that modern science joins our dance with poison. Because as you see the moment, Deborah says, that modern science joins our dance with poison. Because as you see the rise of industrial chemistry and our ability to synthesize cyanide and strict nine and some of these amazingly toxic elements, you also see people's realization of how

useful they are. Man, people are so cool around here. Where are we in Soho? We're in West Soho. West Soho. West Soho. What started happening was, at the beginning of the 20th century, there are all these new cleaning products hitting the market designed to kill germs and pharmaceutical products designed to kill headaches or whatever. And suddenly, all these poisons that

you should just be out there in nature, were in our homes. Or in the drug store, I'll, for example. Do you see it's fun sunglasses? Where? Here are our producers Annie McEwan and Madculley taking a junk. Okay, here we are at Hudson Pharmacy.

On our time, on Tuesday afternoon, this is during working hours. And they only got the weird Dorito flavors. Come on. To the local drug store. Cleaning aisle. Wow. So, Drain O, it's the bottom of the shelf.

Easy for kids to reach. Mm-hmm. It's the bottom of the shelf. Easy for kids to reach. Let's read the ingredients. Contain sodium, hypochloride, sodium hydroxide, and sodium silicate. Okay. Let me see one second. Quick check online, sodium hydroxide. According to Wikipedia, it's used to digest tissues.

Say there's like roadkill in a landfill. They will put the roadkill in a sealed container with sodium hydroxide and water. It's like roadkill in a landfill, they will put the roadkill in a sealed container with sodium hydroxide and water. It's like breaking bad. Yeah, and the body turns into a liquid with coffee like appearance, apparently. It's like turns people into coffee. Yeah. Okay.

Little higher on the shelf. Ah, everybody's favorite childhood cartoon. Mr. Clean, Meadows and Rain sent. Oh yeah. Same thing. Sodium hydroxide. Coffee people. We don't open it. Don't open it.

It's not, it's open you have to buy it. No. Yes. Look, sir. What's this thing? This opens. There's Windex. Oh, this one is just called ammonia.

If you mix ammonia and bleach, what happens? A poison is gas. Results. Also occurs naturally in the atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn. That's impressive. Next one. This little gray bottle up on the highest shelf.

The good ol' it's brush and copper polish. A brass and copper polish. It contains two buttoxia ethanol. It has a sweet ether-like odor. I'm gonna pop this. Oh. Did you just open it and smell it? Oh, it's at harmful if it. Oh, that's.

Okay, well, since it can cause adrenal tumors and animals, it's carcinogenic and rodents. Jesus Christ. Oh, I hope it didn't smell too much of it. Matt. Let's just get out of here. You don't want to get some chips? All right.

We're very comfortable with the fact that we walked down the grocery store aisle or open up the medicine chest and we're surrounded by these different, you know, in pill form or liquid form or spray form or whatever, but these different compounds that actually are dangerous were used to that. We live with that, right? Wow, snakes. Which brings us to a guy.

Let's see. Oh, and there's a plaque for Lewis Goodon. Actually, I saw this plaque dedicated to him on the wall at the Poison Center in Chicago. The appreciation of the initiative and devoted service of Lewis Gadolman, our pH founder of the Poison and Drug Information Center. Anyway, a guy named Lewis Gadolman.

Lewis Gadolman, who is a brilliant scientist in the state of Illinois. Lewis passed away back in 1995, but his wife, Catherine, is still very much alive. Absolutely. She's 98 now, but she met Louis back when she was a 20-year-old nurse working in the St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago.

It was 1940, and he was a pharmacist in the hospital and everybody knew Lou, and we all loved him, and I was the lucky one. I caught him. Louis was sort of a shorter man, dark hair, big dark eyebrows. And he had a great personality, and he would take care of everything that came along.

Friendly, but when it came to his work, he took it very seriously. The pharmacy was directly across the hall from the emergency room. And so what's that happening is, you don't even notice this trend. Like so what's started happening is, Gdolman noticed this trend. Like just a backup, this is the 1940s and doctors are totally winning against infectious diseases.

And what that meant was that as far as the public was concerned, keeping your family healthy and germ free is a big deal. And that meant keeping your home. So clean. Super. Leaming clean. Dupor. So white.

Clean. It really looks clean, doesn't it? And at the same time, there's just this explosion of new cleaning products coming into the market. So our kitchen cabinets and cupboards under the bathroom sink, just getting filled up with all of these things, extravagantly powders and liquids, brightly colored bottles and boxes. All eating kids, Mr. Clean is now the most powerful

ever put into a bottle. That is more good too. And getting back to Lewis, what he began to notice was that more and more, these doctors were coming across the hall to his pharmacy. Like, and then more and more and you know they're saying that hey we've got this kid over in the ER he just got into this new cleaning stuff and we have no idea what's in it can you help us. So the interns and residents in the emergency room would naturally come across the hall

to see Lou and Lou helped them find out what the child had taken. For example if the child had swallowed Ajax, Lou they die! That meant he'd actually eaten sodium carbonate and sodium dodecel benzene sulfonate, which could mean nausea diaria or vomiting. And Lou used to keep cards on every patient that he saw. So with each new product that was brought into the emergency room, Lew would write up a new card.

White sale bleach, sodium hypochlorite, chest pain vomiting. Safety glue decided this was a thing that was very needed. Because by the 1950s, there were over 250,000 different trade names substances on the market. And so doctors, they just couldn't keep up. And so, lose stack of cards, it grew taller and taller and taller and pretty soon Word got out. Docs across the country would hear that there's this guy in Chicago who gives out help on poisoning cases and

So many calls were coming in at all hours of the day and night. Eventually, Gidolman just started telling the switchboard operators They could go ahead and transfer the call to his home We would get calls from all the different little the call to his home. Webid get calls from all the different little emergency rooms and the hospitals and the state. And what was it like once you're doing this then it seems to me that you don't really have normal hours because emergencies will take place whenever they take place. So how was he going to be on call 24 hours a day?

Yes, really? Yes, yes he was. We would get calls in the middle of the night, or even during dinner time. So what happens if he's in the tub and you're cooking dinner and the phone rings? I would take the phone to him in the tub. And that's the way it started. And eventually, lose little operation became the first Poison should do is call 1-800-2-2-2-1-2-2

Poison is the kind of thing you're not supposed to touch. All with scriptions cleaning stuff or spider bites and such. If you swallowed something bad, oh thank you, took too much. Call the poison, control center, hotline, we're the people you can trust. Two, one, Chad. Robert, radio lab. So we are back with reporter Brenna Farrell, who is continuing to inquire into things poisonous. And before the break, we just learned about Louis Ciddaman, who started the oldest poison control center

in the country back in 1953 in Chicago. Yeah, and so today, now, we have 55 poison control centers all across the country, and it's one phone number that anyone anywhere in the U.S. can call whenever they need help. Poison center. Are there certain times of day? Like, is there a rhythm to the day, generally? The usual pattern. It's busy in the morning. You know, kids are getting ready for school and the pressure getting ready for work.

People brushing their teeth with muscle rub cream. Kids drinking a little mouthwash, eating some sunscreen, eating some old mayonnaise. Double doses in the morning, you know, each parent will give the kid a ADHD medication or then the mid afternoon Kind of tapers down a little bit to like four or five is the slowest and then that evening the busiest time of the day overall It's like between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. and it's people coming home from work trying to get dinner super glue instead of I drop super glue instead of lip gloss people take the dodger cats medicine by mistake instead of normal medication. Yeah, that's a frequent scenario. At night, it gets to be with adults. I literally have a list here of all the things that have been used instead of loop.

It's just busy. It's just the hectic schedule that we're living in right now. And Gdolman's old stack of cards, that's become this huge database that's tracking like in real time, these things that are cropping up. The break of San Manila that may have made 22 people sick already. Whether it's a San Manila outbreak or like- The last 11 deaths appear to be connected to heroin being sold in Western New York, that's laced with fentanyl.

A weird drug reaction that people are having, or maybe it's a new product that's unexpectedly dangerous. It's a real laundry detergent pods that look like candy. Now they are being linked to a tragic death of a child. They can see that in real time and let health officials or whoever else know about it. Wow. Which is pretty cool, but I mean,

honestly, just selfishly thinking about myself as a mom coming out of the trip to Poison Control, I remember writing down this feeling of like, you know, like, what if I just approached all the scary decisions in my life the way that Poison Control did? Like, what kind of thinking, like, what would Poison Control do? Like, it just, it felt like such a relief to be experiencing... It was phenobarbital 64.8 milligram tablet. And how much does she weigh?

This super rational place. Like it was just completely rational. And when did it happen? How long ago? We have this data. We're going to take these questions from you. 925. Let me see if this is even going to be a problem.

And then we're going to tell you this is what we think is going to happen. Because then the stomach pain now, she's awake. And they'll let you make a decision or they'll tell you straight up, don't worry about it. I think she's going to be a-okay from here on out. And then take it again, but you will be okay. Okay. It just felt like it's stripped away a lot of the guilt and the anxiety and the like,

should I do this and politics and all those other things that have often swirl around even seemingly to me innocuous questions about how do I keep this person, this little person safe and healthy. There's all this stuff swirling around it and they just, we didn't have to get into any of that. I still remains for me the most interesting part of this is the idea that we're supposed to know things. Like, you know, I talked about this with my dad.

I mean, there was this time in medicine when it was all about the doctor in the white coat, it was this paternalistic thing, doctor knows best, and no one wants to go back there about that. There was something emotionally clean about that, Whereas now we have all the information, it's right there, this is hand in hand with the rise of the internet. And so increasingly, we're expected to be our own experts.

And it's usually presented as this sort of simple idea that information is power. And it isn't power, I mean, it is, but it's also paralysis. Yeah, I actually had a rule where I wouldn't, I would only let Nick look things up, because I couldn't, like I was not, it started when I was pregnant, I like would have a panic attack,

because there were so many different things, and like always the top searches are the ones that like you're gonna die. Oh yeah, and you really, like you get into the comments field, oh, forget it. Oh God, right? I mean, there's something about when you look at the answer

on a screen and you're just one click away from and the exact opposite answer. And then when you're on the phone with someone, it's just you and that person. Like, there is no other distraction. Like, there's something built into the technology that creates exactly the kind of connection you need at that moment.

People, when they call you, it's an emergency, they're panicking, and I think half the battle is getting them to settle down. So this is Tony Berda, the know everything guy we mentioned earlier. I started in February of 81. He's been that calm voice for 30 years. And while he was in pharmacy school, he had an accident. I actually started pharmacy school as a sighted person,

but I finished as a blind individual. What happened? He didn't want to say. Oh, I don't want to dwell on it. But I was sitting there, seeing him doing all of this math and spitting out these numbers. Receptor sites and half lives and volumes of distribution. Which is totally incomprehensible to me.

But he told me that he also pretty quickly had discovered early on that there was this whole other part of doing this job. It was in September of 82. Let's see, I would have probably had like a year and a half of experience at that time. I remember I was sitting in the Poison Center, it was another pharmacist, and we had the news radio

of AM Station on. It was about 10th or even morning, it was another pharmacist. And we had the news radio, AM station on. It was about 10 to 30 in the morning. It was through his flash. ["The New York Times"] Ablazar and terrifying story today in the Chicago suburbs of Arlington Heights and Elk Grove Village. A 12-year-old girl and two men who were brothers are dead after taking poison capsules

of extra strength Tylenol. Several people died from cyanide, at the belief was, from Tylenol. With five deaths in Chicago, that number might be changed to six. Six deaths have now been linked to the capsules, which are leased with cyanide and linked to it. It was this terrifying moment where thousands of people just simultaneously were all thinking, oh my god, this thing I brought into my home to make me feel better, it could kill me. Today across the country, Tylenol products were being pulled from the shelves. I mean, I'm not saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that

I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that

I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that

I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that I'm saying that otherwise. And so you know Tony told me he's sitting there hearing these news broadcasts going across the radio and he just turned to the guy sitting next to him in the Poison Girl Center. Holy yes we're gonna we're gonna get killed. Poison Girl Center. The phone has been ringing off the hook at Rush Press Paturian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. Yeah it's just boom boom boom boom as soon as you hung up the phone. You have the phone rang again.

We've been receiving calls about once every 15 seconds. And other pharmacists and I just grabbed the references and tried to make ourselves sign out experts real fast. And the interesting thing about this case is that in every single one of these calls that was coming in, if someone was terrified, someone was panicked, but they weren't actually in any danger. Officials here say if anyone has taken a cyanide,

laced Tylol capsules, they probably wouldn't be able to make it to the phone to call. So in some way, this moment, if you think about it, it really kind of highlights this thing that is really at the heart of poison control. The specialists not only were calm, but their job was to just reassure. They were letting people know it was going to be okay. But if you flash forward to now, that's changing.

They're getting more calls that are more serious. They're getting calls from hospitals. They're getting calls from people who have taken multiple drugs. And so- Does that mean that they're getting less calls from normal people and parents? Yeah, those calls are going down. And calls overall sense, in the past decade, there have been fewer calls to poison control. Do you know why?

My sense is we don't like to make phone calls anymore. People don't, the internet is there, and that's what we're used to, and that's easy. So they just launched this new, instead of calling, you can go to the website and plug in answers to the questions that they roll through. And it will give you the same answer based on hopefully the same knowledge. But then as a person who's lived through it and like, oh my god, please don't take away that phone call. Because when you're in that panic, the thought of having to sit and type an answer out

while you're holding your kid and like wondering if you've really screwed up, it's like you're in that panic, the thought of having to sit and type an answer out while you're holding your kid and wondering if you've really screwed up, it's like you're taking away something really valuable that maybe we're not valuing here. I did have this one event when my older son, I've got two sons, was very little we were living in Sacramento. That by the way is author Deborah Blum again.

And they didn't have floridated water so our dock gave them these tiny cute, they were really cute, fruit flavored fluoride pills, the kind of thing you could get a toddler to take. I don't know what we were doing but somehow we had given him his daily fluoride pill and then like idiots left it on the kitchen counter and he grabbed it and pretty much inhaled the whole bottle. And I was really freaked. I just didn't know how poisonous that was going to be and I called poison control.

You did. And I did. I was like, am I supposed to, what I wanted to know was whether I should panic, right? I mean, he seemed fine. It wasn't like he was getting sick in any way. And they were completely non-freaked out about it. It was like he, yeah. Remember that experience?

Do you remember here, did you hear their words or did you hear their tone? It was the tone. They were so calm and they could tell I was afraid. And it can just tell you, I'm standing in the kitchen. We had this phone. My son's by me. You know, he can tell I'm afraid, but he doesn't really know I'm afraid and I sat on the floor.

After I talked to them, I just sat down on the floor with him because I was just so grateful, right? And I was. And that's what I remember is how grateful I felt. You can't wait for that, Tristan. Hello. My two and a half year old daughter just ate most of the two with a 0.85 ounce thing of crust. You're absolutely in person, come for it. I'm out here. Oh, yes, either. I ate my son 12 and a half a little of children's motion. We understand.

And what is his weight? He is about 25 to 30 pounds. So, I was 0.243 percent. He's 0.2243. He's 0.2243. He's coming to the child's weight. On a straight line from water and drink from it. Turn it on.

We are doing the race. This one's all around. This is a brand new tip of cheaters. Now it's just tiny bit used. Maybe the P5s are used. It's a native station. That should be the follow. Taro.

Taro and Taro. T-E-R-R-O. Yeah. That's what it says. It's all I can see. It says others to get out. So does that say anything kind of angular to? No, it's anything else.

So you can read? Yeah, 4th hit to 5.ly or 5 percentage. It might be percent, I'm not sure. 5? 5.ly? 5.4 maybe. Maybe, yes, 5.4. Yeah, I'll show you,? Five point four maybe. Maybe yes, five point four. Yeah, I'm sorry, instead of worried, five point four, that's not a problem.

No, no. Oh, thank heaven. Oh, don't give her something to drink and she'll be fine. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Nanna, even close to the hospital, so she can go to the hospital. No, it happens all the time. Yeah. Well, she should be fine.

Yeah. All right, well, thank you so much for your help. You're welcome. You know, he'll be fine. Wow. Let's teach you. Let's teach you. You just put it at ease, and I appreciate you very much.

Oh, we appreciate it. 1-800-222-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-122-1222-2-2. Debra Blum's latest book, The Poison Squad, is going to come out this fall and you can find out more on our website. Thank you also to Nick Capodice, Wendy Blair, Stefan, Marion Moser-Jones, Andrew Perella, Whitney Pennington, Richard Dart, and Natalie Wheaton. This episode was reported by Brenna Ferrell and produced by Ani McEwan with help from Jake Arlo. I'm Chad Abumron. I'm Robert Kroelich.

Thanks for listening. And update from the future, Lulu again. Marty is now nine. And Brenna said that in just the last year, he and his brother have ingested things that required poison control to be called. Anyway, so Brenna's family is doing their part of keeping poison control relevant. Big thanks to her, big thanks to Poison Control, and big thanks to you for listening. Catch you next week with a new one. is edited by Soren Wheeler, Luthe Miller and Lotta Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our

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