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Used nicotine patches can pose threat to kids, pets
May 6, 1997
Web posted at: 1:22 a.m. EDT (0522 GMT)From Medical Correspondent Al Hinman
ATLANTA (CNN) -- Parents who are using nicotine patches to kick the smoking habit need to make sure that they keep those patches away from their children and pets.
According to a new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, transdermal nicotine patches pose a potentially toxic threat to young children who may play with them or even chew them.
And nicotine patches and nicotine gum can be just as toxic to household pets.
"What we're afraid of is that parents don't see the transdermal nicotine patch as a drug," said Dr. Alan Woolf of the Harvard Medical School. "Even a used patch has as much as six to eight cigarettes' worth of nicotine in it."
Woolf says that amount of nicotine is enough to cause acute poisoning in a small creature. Symptoms include dizziness, vomiting and diarrhea and often require a trip to the emergency room.
For parents such as Alison Thirkield, who wants to stop smoking for the benefit of a 17-month-old daughter, the study presents something of a Catch-22. She's introducing one potential toxin into her household to help her get rid of another.
"I think it's extremely important for her that I quit so that she has a mommy around for a longer time and so she has less risk of becoming a smoker when she grows up," Thirkield says.
So Thirkield throws used patches away in a wastebasket safely hidden on the top the bathroom sink, where her daughter can't reach. And her new patches are locked away in a medicine cabinet.
Thirkield learned the hard way of the need for the extra protective steps.
"I have a Jack Russell terrier who just adored nicotine gum, and we had several incidents of her getting ahold of a piece or two," she says.
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