Every child medication poisoning incident is preventable. New packaging solutions are urgently needed to reduce the practice of adults removing pills from their original containers before they are ready to take them.

History shows the potential impact of effective packaging: within three years of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's mandate for child-resistant packaging, deaths from medication and household chemical poisoning among children under 5 dropped by nearly 50%.

While child medication poisonings have continued to decline, the numbers remain alarmingly high. Currently, five children under the age of 6 are rushed to emergency departments every hour — 50,000 cases annually — due to medication poisoning.

A recent study from poison center calls revealed troubling trends:

• 52% of incidents involved children consuming prescription medications that had been removed from their original packaging by an adult. These medications were often transferred to another container (e.g., pillbox or plastic bag), left on a surface for later use, or dropped and forgotten on the floor.

• 71% of calls related to solid-dose medications involved children accessing medications intended for adults, most commonly their parents or grandparents.

• 72% of these exposures involved children aged 2 years or younger.

Effective packaging solutions and increased public awareness are critical to reducing these preventable incidents.