Rescue remedies

As ambulance crews can attest, there are many definitions of a home emergency

As ambulance crews know too well, some people's idea of an emergency is running out of milk. But what about the unseen hazards lurking in your home?

Should residents have to pass a basic intelligence test before their homes can be connected to the telephone network? The Ambulance Service of NSW is way too diplomatic to suggest such a thing but you have to wonder if some people deserve phones, given the crazy reasons they give for dialling 000. In 2005, the service revealed that ambulance officers had raced to homes where on arrival they were confronted by requests to, variously, fetch the resident a pizza, go and buy some milk, feed the dog or – my personal favourite – “retrieve a pillow that fell off the bed because (the patient) was too tired”. To be fair, other callers do realise that ambulance crews exist to address medical as opposed to other emergencies. But it’s the concept of an “emergency” that’s the problem. Crews have been summoned to deal with an eyelash in the eye, a child’s runny nose, a case of “suspected cat scratch” and blisters caused by wearing new shoes.

It’s amazing (and scary) to ponder the health issues some people get bees in their bonnets about. Nonsense 000 calls are at the trivial end of the spectrum; at the other end are anti-fluoride and anti-vaccination activists devoting themselves to compiling lists of “experts” who express an opinion about either intervention, then constructing theories that might link them together. Activism against vaccination and fluoridation is a fascinating social phenomenon, not because the groups concerned are on to something but because there are so many more immediate dangers they could be worrying about. In March, NSW health minister Reba Meagher warned that the state’s Poisons Information Centre receives 48,000 calls each year relating to accidental child poisoning. Incredibly, 3500 children under five are hospitalised every year as a result of poisoning, and five to 10 of them die.

These figures would make front-page headlines if the cause was either vaccination or fluoridation. The biggest culprits in child poisonings are household cleaners, bleach and detergent. Gardening and car products, medicines, insecticides and paint also pose a threat. The Victorian Poisons Information Centre’s 2006 annual report lists products that generated the most calls. Essential oils – such as tea-tree oil, a powerful antiseptic that is toxic in undiluted form – generated 394 calls, more than dishwasher detergent (347) and almost as many as ibuprofen or rat poison (412 calls each).

Anyone who thinks the biggest threat to their or their child’s health comes out of the tap or the point of their doctor’s hypodermic needle would do well to read a book by American professor of medicine Paul D. Blanc called How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace (University of California Press, $29.95). It tells of the rise of occupational diseases since the Industrial Revolution, affecting everyone from cutlery grinders (who suffered from silicosis, due to silica dust) to workers in canning factories (who died of anaemia from inhaling benzene). But chemical dangers aren’t a relic of the 19th century. As recently as 1990, an entire US family was poisoned by mercury after the inside of their house was repainted. The paint used was a low-odour, water-based formulation but an anti-mould compound containing phenyl mercuric acetate had been added and evaporated into the air.

We’re surrounded by toxic chemicals. One is the carcinogenic wood preservative copper chrome arsenate, which is now well recognised. Others are less so, such as the metal manganese. Essential to life in trace amounts, it can cause Parkinson’s disease in larger doses. Industrial applications for manganese have taken off in the past 20 years: in the 1990s a British laundry powder containing a new manganese-based catalyst, Persil Power, was withdrawn by its maker Unilever because clothes fell apart after a few washes. Manganese is put into petrol as the additive MMT – which Blanc says ensures “ubiquitous airborne spread”, adding, “it’s difficult to imagine any more efficient ways of indiscriminately distributing dangerous toxins.”

It all makes you realise why some people are going back to cleaning their homes with vinegar and baking soda. Meanwhile, requests for pizza delivery have waned among the nuisance calls plaguing the NSW Ambulance Service. “It’s more ‘can you change my light bulb’ at the moment,” says a spokeswoman, wearily.

Adam Cresswell is The Australian newspaper’s health editor