ELLA PICKOVER
ELLA PICKOVER
HEALTH officials should be prepared for an increasing number of children accidentally exposed to concentrated nicotine thanks to the rising use of e-cigarettes, doctors have said.
In a letter published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, experts said there is a danger of children coming into contact with the liquid refills for electronic cigarettes - which could cause "severe symptoms" in youngsters.
The experts from Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham called for enhanced safety surrounding the items. They noted that in America there has been a "massive" rise in calls to poisons centres about e-cigarette liquid - with half the calls being about youngsters who had come into contact with the substances.
The letter comes after the medics treated a toddler who had put one of the cartridges in her mouth. While the little girl's mother had quickly retrieved the refill she was worried the youngster may have swallowed some liquid.
Doctors said that they tried to access information on the effects of swallowing such solution but found that specific guidance on the ingestion of nicotine liquid was unavailable.
"The risk posed by nicotine liquid to children needs to be recognised, acknowledged and acted upon by all."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article