5 Products in Your House That Contain Alcohol
Watch out: Kids may drink them instead of liquor to get drunk — with tragic results
Experts say keeping your liquor cabinet under lock and key may reduce the risk of kids getting their hands on alcohol. But there are other items in your home that contain alcohol — some of them higher proof than vodka.
“When most people think about alcohol at home, they think
about the liquor, beer, wine and that kind of thing,” says Savithiri Ratnapalan,
MBBS, MRCP, an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health
and staff physician at The Hospital for Sick Children, both in Toronto. “But there
are other products that have a reasonable amount of alcohol and pose a risk to toddlers
and teenagers.”
Toddlers and young children typically ingest products
containing alcohol accidentally, says Ratnapalan. They may sip mouthwash
because it smells good. But even small amounts of alcohol in their tiny bodies can
pose significant health dangers, up to and including death.
In most cases, teens ingest these on purpose, says
Ratnapalan, as an alternative to beer or liquor.
Here are five common household items you may not realize
contain alcohol. Keep them somewhere your kids can’t see or access them.
Related: 8
Flammable Liquids Lying Around Your House
Cough syrup. Many
teens turn to cough syrup because it contains both alcohol (its alcohol content
rivals vodka’s) and dextromethorphan (or DXM), which can produce an instant high and also lead
to breathing and heart complications. In a study from the
National
Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 4 percent of 12th graders reported using cough
medicine to get high during the past 12 months, which is more than used hallucinogens,
MDMA (ecstasy), oxycodone
(such
as OxyContin) or cocaine.
Mouthwash. Some
brands of these liquid breath-fresheners contain about 20 or 25 percent alcohol.
Mouthwash is designed to taste bad if swallowed to discourage people from
drinking it, according to
Newport Academy, a treatment
center specializing in teen substance abuse. But that doesn’t stop everyone.
Hand sanitizer.
Alcohol-based
hand
sanitizers pose a particularly high risk, as they contain 45 to 95 percent
alcohol. In fact, one
2-ounce container of sanitizer has as much alcohol as four shots of hard
liquor, according to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Calls to poison control
centers about possible hand sanitizer poisoning in kids under 12 have jumped
nearly 400 percent in the past five years, according to the Georgia Poison
Center.
Related: 9
Common Foods a Toddler Can Choke On
Perfume and
cologne.
These products may contain high levels of alcohol, ranging from 50
to 99 percent, says Ratnapalan. While some children have gotten alcohol
poisoning after drinking perfumes, these types of emergencies are rare because perfumes
generally taste pretty awful.
However, a study
published in the medical
journal The Lancet showed that in Russia, almost half of working-age men are
killed by alcohol abuse, with some of them consuming cologne due to its high
alcohol content. Russian men who drank cologne for alcohol were nine times more
likely to die than those who drank liquor.
Windshield wiper
fluid and antifreeze.
These products have seriously injured and killed many
teens, who knowingly or unknowingly consume them. An 18-year-old
died after drinking methanol she thought was vodka while at a party,
according
to the Toronto Star. Windshield wiper fluid contains methanol and antifreeze contains ethylene glycol — and they contain a large amount of these alcohols, as well as other chemicals that can be
fatal if swallowed.
Parents should talk to their kids about the dangers of ingesting products like these, Ratnapalan says. “It’s important to have an open discussion about it.”
Related: Protect Your Wee One from These 5 Household Hazards