How to provide first aid for poisoning: what you need to do

Poisoning in people's lives happens quite often. Their reasons are most commonplace - they did not check the expiration date on the product packaging, were tempted by smoked fish glossy with fat, ate soup of dubious quality in the dining room, and did not pay attention to the unpleasant smell in the car.

Regardless of the cause, in case of poisoning, medical care should be carried out according to certain rules. The first thing that others must do or the victim himself (if he has the strength to do this) is to call an ambulance. What to do while doctors are on a call? What help is needed in case of poisoning if there is no way to contact a doctor? Each of us should have an idea of ​​what to do if substances hazardous to health have entered the body.

Toxic gases

Do not think that you cannot be poisoned, because you don’t eat mushrooms, you always scrupulously study the expiration dates of the goods, don’t have stoves in the house, and you never visit catering places. The world around us, being dominated by technological progress, has become much more inhospitable than it was some hundred years ago.

Residents of megacities daily inhale tons of unhealthy substances, have a bite on the go, having bought something at a fast-food point, rejoice when they managed to purchase cheap super-action products without thinking that their shelf life has expired. But those who protect their health are not immune from the mistakes and carelessness of others. So, in your city at an industrial enterprise, an accident or just a technological release can occur, in which tons of toxic gases enter the atmosphere.

If there is a warning about the accident, people should stay at home whenever possible and hang up closed windows with a damp cloth, such as a sheet. If you need to move along the street, you must wear a respirator or at least a mask. If there is nothing special at hand, you can cover your mouth and nose with clothes, for example, a scarf folded several times.

Although such situations are extraordinary and very rare, how to provide first aid in case of poisoning, you need to know, because in a large-scale accident there can be many victims, doctors will not physically be in time for all the victims.

Workers in hazardous industries can be poisoned by poisonous gases even without a global catastrophe, for example, if the containers for storing chemical substances are not tight or if the production process is disturbed. Poisoning with poisonous gas is possible in everyday life when performing actions with hazardous chemicals in a closed room, for example, in a garage.

What to do

Signs of poisoning will depend on the type of gas. In some cases, chemical burns of the larynx and bronchi, spasms of the respiratory system, convulsions and coma may occur. Generally, the symptoms may be as follows:

• Cough.
• Headache.
• Sore throat.
• Tearing.
• Sneezing, runny nose.
• Dizziness.
• Impaired orientation in space.
• Tinnitus.
• Increased irritability caused by fear.
• Lack of coordination of movements.

In case of gas poisoning, assistance should be provided as soon as possible, since the victim may begin to have pulmonary edema, leading to death.

If the gases are inhaled by the mouth, the symptoms may be:

• The appearance of a metallic taste.
• Pain and burning in the throat, in the esophagus, in the stomach.
• Bloody vomiting.
• Diarrhea.
• Anuria
• Laryngeal edema.
• Respiratory arrest.

With formalin poisoning, dermatitis of open areas of the body (hands, face), eczema, and nail damage are observed.

First aid for gas poisoning consists in the following actions:

• If possible, remove the victim from the danger zone. If this is not possible, you need to cover his face or only his mouth and nose with a breathable cloth dampened with water.
• Lay on a flat surface so that his legs are raised.
• Cover, warm.
• Give a smell of ammonia if a person has lost consciousness.
• Rinse eyes and skin in open areas of the body with soda solution (teaspoon per liter of water).
• If burns form on the skin, apply dressings with antiseptics.
• When gases enter the digestive tract, give a lot of water to drink.

Domestic gas poisoning

Do not think that only suicides poison the natural gas with which we prepare delicious dishes.

According to medical statistics, such incidents happen quite often. The most trivial reasons:

• Milk “escaped” on the stove, the fire in the burner went out, but the gas still came from the gas pipe.
• Unattended children turned the knobs on the stove (turned on the burners).
• Older people forgot to turn off the burner, blocking only the gas in the pipe. The next time you use the stove, they do not pay attention to the fact that the burner is on and gas enters the room.

To reduce the incidence of poisoning, a special aroma with a characteristic odor is added to natural gas. Many react to it and rush to the kitchen to check if everything is in order.

If the room is filled with gas, you must immediately open all the windows in the house, having a draft.

Symptoms of poisoning:

• Nausea.
• Tearing.
• Headache.
• Oppression of the central nervous system.
• Rapid pulse.
• Loss of consciousness.

Helping with gas poisoning comes down to the following actions:

• Remove the victim to fresh air (to the courtyard, to the balcony).
• Loosen his clothes to ensure free breathing (unfasten the top and following buttons).
• Lay on its side. This must be done so that in case of vomiting, the person does not choke.
• Try to find the pulse. If not, do an indirect heart massage.
• If the victim does not breathe, take artificial respiration.

Causes of carbon monoxide poisoning, risk groups

Specialists call this gas carbon monoxide (CO). It is lighter than air, has no smell, any taste, is not painted in any way. That is, it is almost impossible to notice its release on Wednesday. Meanwhile, this gas is extremely toxic. According to hygiene standards, its maximum permissible concentration in a cubic meter of air is allowed only 0, 0017% or 20 mg / m ³ .

In the exhaust gases of cars it should be from 1.5% to 3%. To find out, the relevant authorities conduct such a hateful test for many drivers on CO. Its purpose is to find out how much deadly substance a vehicle emits into the environment and what threat poses to others, that is, to all of us. Help with carbon monoxide poisoning should be provided immediately, since this condition very often ends for the victim's death.

Risk groups:

• Car owners can suffer if they perform any work when the engine of their car is turned on, while being in a closed garage.
• Carbon monoxide is poisoned by people who have been near busy motorways for a long time, where the maximum permissible concentration is exceeded several times.
• Residents of private houses, owners of cottages using stove heating.
• In case of fire, especially in cases where smoldering objects are observed, which, as a rule, receive less attention than open fire.
• In industries using CO in the process.
• People in rooms not equipped with adequate ventilation, where gas stoves and other open burning equipment are used.

Many will be surprised to learn that CO is poisoned even by smoking a hookah if there is not enough oxygen entering the apparatus. The smoker may feel nausea, drowsiness, headache, dizziness. Help with carbon monoxide poisoning in this case is to provide people with an influx of fresh air. The victim can be taken outside, give him a cup of coffee.

If the CO in the room is only 0.08%, people experience suffocation. At a concentration of 0.1%, a person dies within an hour. At a concentration of 0.32% - for 30 minutes, and if CO contains 1.2% - it is enough to take a couple of breaths to die.

This danger of CO is associated with the fact that in the body it forms very strong compounds with hemoglobin, blocking the flow of oxygen to cells and organs.

Help with carbon monoxide poisoning

Note that such a state can have several degrees.

A lung is characterized by the following symptoms:

• Slight nausea.
• Weak, but obsessive headache, throbbing in the temples.
• Visual impairment, pain in the eyes.
• Vomiting
• Shortness of breath during physical exertion of medium intensity.
• Dry cough.
• Lack of coordination of movements.
• Suffocation.
• Increased blood pressure.
• Chest pain.

Even mild poisoning can be fatal to the cores, hypertensives and the fetus in the womb.

The victim should immediately be taken to where there is fresh air, warmed, given strong tea or coffee.

With moderate severity, the following symptoms are added to the above:

• Noise in ears.
• Drowsiness.
• Paralysis (while a person may be conscious).
• Hallucinations.
• "Flies" before the eyes.
• Cramps.
• Stunned.
• Difficulty breathing.
• Tachycardia, arrhythmia.
• Hyperemia of the skin.

Before the ambulance arrives, the victim must be taken out into the fresh air, unfastened buttons on his clothes, rubbed his chest, limbs, and let the ammonia smell (if a person has lost consciousness).

For severe CO poisoning are characterized by:

• Filamentous pulse.
• Cramps.
• Coma.
• Lack of response to light with open eyes.
• Involuntary discharge of urine and feces.
• Cyanosis of the skin and mucous membranes.
• Intermittent breathing or lack thereof.

In this case, care for carbon monoxide poisoning should be carried out by doctors. The victim must be connected very quickly to the oxygen cushion, and the drug “Acyzolum” should be administered intramuscularly.

At the scene, before the ambulance arrives, you must try to provide the person with breathing with clean air. If necessary, conduct resuscitation measures (artificial respiration and indirect heart massage).

Food poisoning

Not a single person is safe from this. You can get poisoned by eating something stale. Some sellers and food service workers flavored them with a lot of spices to sell expired products. If you are offered just such a pie, barbecue or any other dish, think about whether it is worth eating. Very often both adults and children are poisoned by expired dairy products. Especially kefir, yogurt, cottage cheese “sin” this, that is, that product that can be acidic in good condition.

Another very dangerous product, often causing food poisoning, is fish - herring, smoked, dried.

Doubts should cause an unusual color of the product, not characteristic of its turbidity, precipitate, consistency, suspicious smell and taste, the allocation of bubbles with stirring.

Why are expired products dangerous? First of all, by the fact that pathogenic microorganisms begin to multiply in them. It is the products of their life that cause intoxication. Therefore, help with food poisoning should be provided given that a person has a bacterial infection.

Symptoms may depend on the type of microbe. Among them, the most common pathogenic Escherichia coli, proteuses, bacilli of Cereus, enterococci, botulinum bacillus, staphylococci and others. Some of them can become deadly, so in no case should you eat doubtful food and expired products, even if their appearance is quite acceptable. This is the only preventative measure against food poisoning.

But such a nuisance can occur when eating fresh food, which contains chemicals that are dangerous to humans. Help with poisoning is required if a person has taken:

• Inedible mushrooms.
• Agricultural products containing nitrates, pesticides.
• Edible mushrooms, herbs, berries collected along the roads, which absorbed hazardous chemicals.
• Gifts of nature collected near cemeteries, sedimentation tanks, chemical industries. Fish from polluted reservoirs is also dangerous. In this and previous cases, poisoning occurs due to the accumulation of salts of heavy metals, cyclic hydrocarbons, nitrites, nitrosamines and other toxic substances in living organisms.

Few people know that there are species of fish in which certain parts of the body become poisonous in certain months. Under certain conditions, certain foods possess the same property. These include:

• Milk of barbel (barbus).
• Pufferfish.
• In some months, roe and milk of burbot, pike, as well as mackerel liver and cod.
• Sprouted or greened potatoes.
• Raw Beans.
• Bitter nucleoli of apricots, plums, almonds.
• Moldy bread, rolls (even if you cut the bad sections, and fry croutons from the missing bread).

First aid for food poisoning

Symptoms of food poisoning may vary, depending on the product consumed. Common are:

• Sudden onset.
• Sharp abdominal pains.
• Diarrhea.
• Nausea (sometimes even the most harmless smells and light movements, such as turning from back to side, provoke it).
• Vomiting (if little time has passed since the poisoning, food fragments will be present in the vomit).
• General malaise.
• Chills.
• Headache.
• Trembling limbs.
• High temperature (not always).
• Bloating.
• Cold sweat.
• Decrease in blood pressure.

It is important to note that in case of poisoning with food containing botulinum bacilli, the first symptoms can appear only after a few days, when pathogenic microorganisms make changes in the organs and systems that are incompatible with life.

At the same time, the patient, along with the above signs of intoxication, has problems with vision and hearing, drying out of the mucous membranes in the mouth, “mesh”, fog before the eyes, muscle weakness (it is difficult to keep the head in its usual position), flatulence. Further, strabismus, ptosis in one or both eyes, anisocoria (different diameter of the pupils), and atony develop.

If symptoms occur during the day, help with food poisoning is as follows:

• Gastric lavage. The victim is forced to drink a large amount of water (you can add potassium permanganate by making a pinkish solution), after which they cause vomiting. If a person refuses to drink voluntarily, for example, a child, they pour liquid by force. The procedure is repeated until the vomit will consist only of drunk water.
• Reception of enterosorbents. Suitable “Smecta”, “Enterosgel”, all familiar activated carbon, “Polysorbent”, “Karbofan” and analogues.
• Reception of hydrotonics. Due to the large loss of fluid due to diarrhea and vomiting, it is necessary to take Regidron, Oralit, Hydrotonics, Marovit, Reosolat and other hydrotonics. You can prepare such a tool yourself, diluting in a liter of water a teaspoon without a hill of salt and a little less than a tablespoon of sugar.
• Warming the patient. After washing the stomach, a person needs to be covered with a warm blanket.

It is strictly forbidden to “be treated” with alcohol tinctures, antibiotics, antidiarrheal drugs.

Remember, only professional medical care for poisoning with products with botulinum sticks can save a person. In a hospital, the injured must be cleansed of the digestive tract from residues of toxins, intestinal dialysis, administration of antitoxic serum, oxygenation to prevent hypoxia. In some cases, a number of resuscitation measures are performed. It is impossible to provide such a course of treatment at home.

Mushrooms and berries

Every year, dozens of people who eat poisonous mushrooms die in the world. The most dangerous of them is the pale grebe, which many inexperienced mushroom pickers take for champignon. This mushroom is so poisonous that a quarter of its cap is enough for the pan to die. Also poisonous are fly agarics, galerin, whitish talker, cobweb, entoloma, silverfish. In different regions, they may have other names.

If improperly processed, conditionally edible mushrooms become dangerous, and if the storage terms are violated, they become edible. Help with mushroom poisoning depends on how quickly the symptoms appear. However, in any case, you must immediately call an ambulance. Particularly difficult to tolerate poisoning is children, pregnant women, people weakened by diseases. For them, the outcome can be very sad.

Mostly children poison herbs. The danger is wolf berries, taken for currants, lily of the valley, euonymus and some others. To avoid this, you need to monitor your kids, and also explain to them what you can eat and what you can’t even try.

First aid

Symptoms of poisoning can occur a couple of hours after the meal, and may not make themselves felt for a day or more. The victim who has eaten a pale grebe or smelly fly agaric is observed:

• Hard to endure abdominal pains.
• Salivation.
• Lacrimation.
• An agonizing nausea.
• Repeated diarrhea.
• Vomiting
• Narrowing of the pupils.
• Headache.
• Bradycardia
• Difficulty breathing.
• Hallucinations.
• Cramps.
• Increased sweating.
• Decrease in body temperature.

Guilty of this poison is phyloidin, which cannot be neutralized under any culinary treatments. Once in the body, it immediately begins to destroy liver cells, but symptoms can occur only on the third day.

Emergency care for poisoning with this poison can be effective, oddly enough, before the appearance of signs (for example, a person realized that he had eaten a bad mushroom, and immediately began to wash his stomach, quickly went to the hospital). In other cases, less than 30% of the victims are saved.

Other fungi, mentioned above, contain poison urellanin. Its cunning is that the first signs can appear many days after a meal (sometimes the incubation period lasts two weeks).

Symptoms

• Great thirst.
• Pain in the kidneys and peritoneum.
• Feeling that limbs are freezing.
• Headache.
• Weakness, malaise.

Flushing the stomach in this situation does not make sense. Only specific treatment in the hospital can help the patient, aimed at neutralizing toxins and restoring the work of damaged organs. The death rate due to poisoning with eurellanin is also very high.

Some mushrooms contain muscarin (fly agaric, panther). When poisoning them, the symptoms are as follows:

• Strong emotional arousal, followed by drowsiness, lethargy.
• Hallucinations.
• Bradycardia
• Rave.
• Signs of intoxication (diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain).
• Increased salivation and lacrimation.
• Hysteria.
• Anuria

First aid for poisoning with poisonous mushrooms is an urgent washing of the stomach with inducing vomiting, but these actions are far from effective in all cases. The patient can be given enterosorbents to drink, wrap him up and in this position wait for the doctors. In a hospital, the victim should be provided with professional assistance consisting in the neutralization of toxins. Also perform treatment according to indications.

At home, before the doctors arrive, you can give a person a drink of a decoction of clover, horsetail and oak bark (5: 5: 2). A mixture is made of dry ingredients, 3 soup spoons are taken, pouring with boiling water, allowed to stand for at least 10 minutes, quickly cooled to make the infusion warm, and allowed to drink half a glass. This folk remedy is also able to neutralize some poisons.

Conclusion

Food, gas, or chemical poisoning happens daily with hundreds of people. To protect yourself from such incidents, first of all you need to carefully approach your diet, do not use expired products, even if they look great, do not pick mushrooms and berries in inappropriate places. Car enthusiasts are required to equip their cars with devices that clean the exhaust gases from CO, parents should not leave small children without supervision.

If nevertheless a misfortune happened, you need to quickly call an ambulance without losing your temper, and while she is traveling, follow the steps recommended in our article.