A STUDY OF STORAGE, CHILD BEHAVIORAL TRAITS, AND MOTHER'S KNOWLEDGE OF TOXICOLOGY IN 52 POISONED FAMILIES AND 52 COMPARISON FAMILIES

¹ University of Virginia School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia

Like the paper that immediately precedes it, the following paper casts serious doubts on widely used countermeasures against poisoning—the safe storage of toxic products and the education of parents as to the toxicity of products commonly used in the home. The significant variable in childhood poisonings, according to these investigators, is the characteristic behavior of the child. Like many other studies of the same general type, however, the present one raises two questions, one having to do with the methodology, the other with the implications of the findings.

In retrospective studies which rely on recollections or other subjective reports by an interested party, one must always suspect that the event being studied (in this case a poisoning incident) may very well have distorted the subjective report. Is the mother of a child who has recently been hospitalized for poisoning more likely to report that her child "is always getting into everything" than the mother who has not experienced the same sort of event? The use of a control group, no matter how carefully selected, offers no protection against such distortion. The only satisfactory solution is to rely on objective records made before the event (and these are usually difficult to obtain) or to make the study a longitudinal one (which is especially difficult in accident research because accidents occur infrequently).

Any study that relates accidental injury to the personal characteristics of the victim raises more questions than it answers with respect to the development of effective countermeasures. Should efforts be directed toward changing the child's behavior pattern—by working with the child or with his mother or both? Or, once the child's behavior pattern is identified, should efforts be made to protect his environment by educating the parent about toxicity or by safeguarding toxic products, or both? At present these questions remain unanswered.

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