Current annual report for American Association of poison control centers

   I read through the three parts: age and gender distributions, reason for exposure, route of exposure and their data table on page 979 at AAPCC(American Association of poison control centers) 2014 current annual report. 


   The first part is age and gender distributions, we noticed that 47.7% of children who under the age of six are affected by poison. Seeing this 47.7% of children as one group, nearly 70% of children from that group are under the age of three; this group of children are infant and don't have much cognitive ability. They are easily to eat toxic food when their parents are not around. From the evidences above, we can see that there are so many toxic chemicals in our daily life. Also, boys are more active than girls so they are more easily get toxic chemicals than girls. 


   The second part is reason for exposure. It indicates that 79.4% of exposure are unintentional, still provides the evidence that there are so many toxic substances around our life. The therapeutic error and misuse also play a big part in it, the therapeutic error takes 12.6 and the medicine misuse takes 5.8%.  Although the rate is not very high but it still affect hundreds of thousands individuals, so it's still a big problem. But there are some thing we can do to prevent it from happening. Such as create a comprehensive medical file; FDA can also apply a more strict rule to control drugs. 

   The last part is route  of exposure. We can see 83.74% of route of exposure are ingestion, so food safety is the biggest issue that we should focus on. Water pollution and farm chemicals caused I can't eat a cucumber without cleaning it, but how can I know the water I used to clean the cucumber is pure and clean? Dermal and inhalation take the next  two big parts because of chemical fabrics and air pollution. 


   All in all, human body is very fragile. After the industrialization there are millions of new chemicals and antibiotics appear and human take millions years to evolve and adapt the environment. We may can't experience things like 1800s London pollution again, but we are facing  new environment challenges and new chemicals more than ever before. Any chemicals should serve one propose that to make a better life and a better world for human without harming human.





I searched "water pollution" on google and I find this picture. We can see the beautiful background in this picture, but the pollution on the beach gets more attention. It is a strong warning to us that we need protect the environment intermediately. 

It is the refrigerator in my apartment, I put all the food I bought into the refrigerator. Since the food safety is the biggest issue, I am worried about if I eat the poisoned food. The government should tack action for food safety.