No, calls to U.S. poison control centers aren't suddenly spiking after Trump's disinfectant comments. But many are misusing CDC data from March to make that claim reason.com/2020/04/25/no-… via @reason
"Poison control centers around the country, including here in Kentucky, are seeing a spike in calls related to COVID-19," says the WDRB.com story.
Ashley Webb, director of the Kentucky Poison Control Center, told the outlet that "just in March, we saw about a 30% increase in hand sanitizer exposures and about a 50% increase in household cleaners."
A similar spike in calls to poison control centers has been seen in many states. But these boosts all started in March, as people began using more household disinfectants to try and stave off the new coronavirus, and not just last week.
Michigan reported "a nine percent increase in calls for accidental poisoning from home cleaning supplies" in March, says ABC 57.
In Maryland, over the past 6 weeks, "calls for toxic exposure to hand sanitizers have nearly doubled since the same time in 2018," according to Fox 5. "In addition...there have been 95 calls for bleach exposure, more than double last year's 46 calls in the same time period."
In Illinois, two people "had 'inappropriate exposure' to disinfectants after President Trump's COVID-19 briefing Thursday," reported WCIA.com on Friday.
But a spokesperson for Illinois Poison Control told WCIA that this wasn't unusual and calls had been up 36 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic's start, often related to people doing things like trying to wash produce with cleaners that are toxic for people to ingest.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 28,158 people called U.S. poison control centers about possible exposure to household cleaners in March 2020, compared to 25,021 in March 2019.
The number of calls about possible exposure to disinfectants went from 12,801 in March 2019 to 17,392 in March 2020.
The CDC report containing these numbers was released this week, so many have interpreted the data as being related to the Trump disinfectant hoopla. But the CDC data on poison control calls end on March 31.
