Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian and Jerry's over here, and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, how are you doing? Man? I'm great. I'm have not been poisoned yet. I have no need to get on the phone and call an expert at this point. Luckily, my daughter has never been poisoned, although that's a big concern for parents. Yeah, no joke here, No, not joking, nothing funny about poisoned children, unless you're talking about little young Brett Michael's. He was he was a stitch in a cut up. Oh oh oh wow, a little ricky rocket. I was confused, Um, tickled, and then disappointed, all within like half of a second. Oh, I thought you were gonna stay disappointed in the joke, because that's the fourth stage of recovery. I thought it was great. Maybe like a month from now, I'll be like, you know, that jokes about poison wasn't that great? But who knows, maybe I'll also be laughing about it years later. For example, UM, I watched uh F the other day for the first time in a little while. I haven't seen it, and just today, out of the blue apropos of nothing, I cracked myself up thinking about one of the jokes. So, uh, there's a segment about Conan the librarian. Somebody asks for a book on astronomy, and Conan grabs the guy and lifts him up by his shirt and he goes, don't you know the Dewey decimal system was in it? It was a really good approximation of Arnold. For a second, I thought it was Bruce Campbell and I actually looked on the credits and it's not. But um, it looks exactly like Bruce Campbell doing Arnold Schwarzenegger. You know what I watched the other day for the I think first time ever did we talk about this pumping iron? Yeah, I've never watched it. I think we might have already spoken about this, though I did on the show even maybe No, no, no, definitely not within weeks. No, no, unless, like my brain is sloshing around, probably has everyone out there's going, Yes, Josh, you mentioned it three episodes ago, and you're both stupid. It rings a bell that you did mention it, but it was not weeks ago. I think you're confusing your other podcast, Movie Crush. I don't think so, because one of them is good and one of them is you're crazy cutting up. But you're talking about a movie and it couldn't possibly have been mentioned on the movie podcast. Is what your position is? Maybe it was okay, but Movie Crushes the good podcast. Oh well, I resubmit my you're crazy. I'm sorry. I just poisoned you. Yeah, and a million listeners, So maybe we should just get going on this. I thought this was really interesting. I think we should take an ad break. No. So yeah, it was interesting and it wasn't like based on anything but curiosity. Like I realized that I had no idea how poison control centers worked, Like like you, I have never had occasion to call one. Luckily, um, but they're there, and it's kind of like a really great thing that they're there and that they are, um there to keep scared parents from you know, freaking out because their kids ate something weird or their dog ate something weird, or you know, they ate something weird. Um, and to say basically say like no, you need to get to a hospital. And not only that, I'm gonna help you throughout this process of going to the hospital and staying at the hospital, because poison control centers are like the most hands on remote medical discipline there is. Yeah, and if it was a hundred and change years ago, you'd be lucky if whatever you accidentally drank in your house even has ingredients listed on it. And if it did have ingredients, you'd be lucky if they were accurate or truthful, because no one cared and you wouldn't be able to call anyone to help. And if you went to your local, you know, community doctor, good luck if they're even available a hundred and ten years ago. And if they were, they'd probably be like, jeez, I don't really know what to do except maybe try and make you vomit. Yeah, nothing more than a two bit bumpkin was what you had for a doctor back then, you drinking sody pop. Yeah, exactly, the sassafras um. But and and so you might say, well, like, what is a hundred years ago matter? Why not further back? That's a really good question, And the answer that is that poison control is a fairly recent invention, not because people just thought of it, but because we didn't really need it before, because we didn't really have poisons around us prior to about the Industrial Revolution, Like the closest thing you had to poison was a snake that made its way into your house. You definitely didn't open your your cabinet beneath the sink, probably because you didn't have a sink, but also even if you had a sink, you didn't have like household chemicals at your disposal until industrialization came around. Yeah, I mean before that, there might have been you know, you could extract some poison type things from plants and maybe got something at a at a traveling kind of snake oil situation, but it wasn't like they were on the general store shelves all over the country and then later stores, like you said, until the Industrial Revolution when we said, hey, it turns out that we can use chemicals. Uh, and they they can be very handy. They are dangerous, but I mean, who would who would drink a bottle of floor cleaner? People know better than that, Right, We don't have to tell that, do we You're right exactly? Um? They said, actually, yes, we totally do. And I saw actually a comparison on a poisoned website that's still today. People apparently get poisoned, including adults, from accidentally drinking things that they think are other safer things. And they had bottles of stuff next to bottles of others, like food, and you're like, wow, that really actually does bear a passing resemblance, Like pine salt looks a lot like apple juice when you put it next to a bottle of apple juice. And there's a brand of apple juice that looks roughly like the pine salt label. Yeah, it's not so I think you could drink um. The most you would do is probably embarrass yourself. But I see things that look like toothpaste a lot that you would not want to put on a toothbrush and put in your mouth. What are you hanging around with that looks like toothpaste that you wouldn't want to brush your teeth with? Well, I mean there's all sorts of I mean, like lubes you looving en up like calamine, and you know, I feel like I've seen some other creams and things that look you know, because that's a it's an obviously a good way to carry it, toothpaste like thing, and it is an old tube like that, but a lot of them look alike. Is my point. I see, So do you have to be like, don't brush your teeth with this reminder to use a children's toothpaste so it has big dinosaurs on it. I think it wasn't so much back in the day. Like now today, there's like basically no excuse because we spent the last hundred years being um inculcated into the idea that there are a lot of dangerous things in our everyday lives. But you know, back in the day, this was all brand new to people and they just didn't know. Um. Sometimes manufacturers actually didn't know, and they found out the hard way. And because people were suffering from this, it was obvious that there was a need for people to say, Okay, we need to start studying these things a little more. And a lot of the um great great meaning like really fantastic and triumphant government bureaucracies here in the United States arose from protecting like everyday people from the stuff that they were eating his food or using his medicines, like things you're supposed to be able to trust. They couldn't trust back then. So entire sub disciplines of the medical profession kind of developed to protect people from those things. Yeah, it was mid delayed eighteen hundreds when people started saying, hey, this is a problem, this is an issue. I think a lot of journalists did great work early on to expose a lot of this stuff, a lot of these dangers, and say, you know, some of these medicines can be really dangerous. Then a guy came along named Dr Harvey Wiley. He ran the Bureau of Chemistry, which proceeded the f d A, and he had a group called the Poison Squad, who were these healthy young men who would who would poison themselves. They would eat chemicals to see what happened. Because, as you'll see kind of throughout this whole epiodisode, much of the work of poison control, from the very beginning all the way up through today is just simply categorizing and listing out things that make people sick and exactly how they make them sick. It's like it's like a big database, right, and then in the best case scenario, how to treat with somebody who accidentally ingest that thing too. You know. But we talked about Wiley and the Poison Squad. We did an episode years ago UM called Does the FDA Protect Americans? And we talked about them and like, hats off to them. But between the muckrakers and Dr Wiley, um, not just government was kind of forced into action, but the public started to become educated about, you know, just how dangerous their everyday life was, where before they hadn't really realized it on any kind of collective level, you know. Yeah, I think it was the UM and I then we talked about the Pure Food and Drug Act, Right, didn't you just say that? Not yet? Okay? That was nineteen o six, also called it the Wiley Act after Harvey Wiley, and it basically said, hey, you gotta start labeling stuff. You gotta be really clear about what's in certain products, especially if it contains alcohol, heroin, caffeine, cannabis. You gotta let people know what's in these products. And again with the media, they were bringing it to light, and if you were a company at the time, it became a thing where like just from a pr standpoint, you needed to start doing this and be a little more transparent. Otherwise you would get a bad name if poisoning was in the newspaper and your product was you know, kind of to blame. Yeah, yeah, which I mean that's kind of what the um. The Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen o six was predicated on the idea that a company would want to protect its image or business and not suffer ruination from bad PR. But they found out um in oh, I guess the mid nineteen thirties that that just wasn't the case. Um, well, I think we should do a short stuff on this this episode. It's just nuts what happened. But the upshot is that a preparation of sulfonillamide, an antibiotic, was prepared using anti freeze. Um and there was yeah and there and to give it like a sweet flavor, raspberry flavor. That's sweet, sweet and free. That's right. But the upshot of the whole thing was that there was no regulation that said, you guys need to test this first. They can just market it. And they actually got him on a technicality, but a hundred people died from this, and that really hastened the UM the law. I think it was an amendment to the Pure Food and Drug Act that basically said, Okay, not only do you have to label stuff now when it has any kind of chemicals or weird ingredients, you also need to test these things first before you release them to the public. That was a huge, huge um foundation that was laid to protect just people like you and me from the stuff that's in our kitchen or our bathroom, you know. And it's not like somebody said, Okay, next up poison control centers. But that was kind of like the the zeitgeist that was churning as poison control centers started to come along, you know, tangentially to that. All Right, so the groundwork is laid, Let's take a break and we'll come back and get going with in earnest poison control centers. I love these episodes, Chuck, where we spend a full third talking about not the thing. No, but this is all important. I know. Take it easy on yourself. I'm trying. I'm still recover ring from that that haymaker you threw earlier movie crush. Yeah. Oh, by the way, since uh, we don't do any kind of podcast promotion for our shows at our network, I would like to promote the Alan Ball six ft Under anniversary episode. If you were a fan of six ft Under, I'm really really proud of this episode and go check it out. It's it's out now. So you interviewed the Alan Ball creators feed under my basement on my zoom. That's so awesome. Did you say sixth anniversary? Couldn't be six? Okay, I thought you said sixth for some reason. Yeah, that's really and plus I guess that'd be kind of a bizarre anniversary to celebrate now that they think about it, the sixth anniversary. When does that come out? It's out, it's live. That's great. Congratulations, thanks man, it's a good one. So um, all right, you were being unkind to my friend when I had to plug make that plug? Who Dr Chevalier Jackson? No, you, oh, Emily, and always say that when we're beating ourselves up, say that be nicer, to be nicer to my friend. Alright, So twentieth century is is going strong. People are starting to understand, uh and you know, they were making efforts to try and catalog some stuff, but it was really sort of all over the place in the early few decades. I think in the in the twenties. Uh, lie that you made soup with and some people still mix up with was kind of one of the big poisoners of children because depending on what form you had it, and it could look like milk or sugar, and there was a doctor named Dr Chevalier Keihode Jackson who was a laryngologist. That's gotta be how you say it right, not a laryngologist, I guess so. I'd never said it out loud. I've always said it in my head, but I've never noticed how I say it. Well, I think you think you said it. I mean laryngologists would be what you think, but laryn geologists sounds more correct, even though it sounds funny. Aaryngeologist, Yeah, it's got to be that. How maybe it's just called him an E and T. Maybe it's laryngeologist or a larynge al list. Lauren, No, you're missing a couple of letters there, lurngel lists, the laryngelo list. There you go. Oh goodness, it still cracks me that word for the rest of the episode. It still cracks me up after fourteen years when people sweethearts right in and say, hey, you know, I'm an expert. If you want to help pronounce me pronounce pronunciating something right exactly, give me up. I'll help you pronunciate all all day long. Goodness, alright. What's funny is it'll be like from a laryngelologist, and we'll just never mentioned larynge al alogists again, so hopefully unless it comes up a lot like our new friend molly Bidnium, molly B, molly B is all over alright. So this laryngologist was having a lot of cases of kids coming in and swallowing LIE. Wouldn't kill you, but it would tear up your esophagus so bad that you might die because you can't eat, which is just awful. So Dr Jackson said, we gotta really do something about this LIE problem, and uh really championed the Federal Caustic Poison Act of ninety seven, which basically kind of only covered I don't know if it only covered LIE, but it only covered caustic poisons. Yeah, it was pretty narrow and pretty specific, and it basically just said you have to put a warning symbol on right now on those specific things. But it was a it was an early um law related to the idea of household chemicals being dangerous to people and letting people now, because up to that point, the producers of LIE were like, uh, no, we have no interest in labeling our product is dangerous. Why would we tell people that. In fact, a lot of them marketed the exact opposite were like safe on skin gentle, you know, like a mountain rain to that kind of stuff. And it's like, no, it's it's lie. This is like drain cleaner, you know, or oven cleaner. It's like the worst of the worst. But that that law got it past. So that helped laid the groundwork as well. Um. And then in the thirties there was a guy who came along named Dr J. I mean, it's spelled arena, so maybe it's arena or arena, one of the two. And he was a pediatrician at Duke, and he basically said, look, this problem extends a lot more to beyond lie, Like there's a lot of chemicals that are poisoning kids. I think he actually did write a thing about lie in particular. Um, but he was he was saying like, no, this is this is worth cataloging. And I think he started the process. He started the whole cataloging poisons trend that became so huge in the thirties. Yeah, he wrote a book called Beyond the Lie Colon just kidding that that subtitle is terrible. Uh So, if you want to look at the might be the father of the Poison Control Center. Yeah, this is the guy. Not not quite as awesome as being like the Godfather of Soul or the Queen of Soul, or the father of hip hop or Father Time. But if you're the father of the Poison Control Center, you've done a lot of good. And it was a pharmacist in Chicago name. Uh, I'm gonna say Dolomon, Louis Dolman with a silent G on the front. Does that make sense. I was gonna do a shout out to our Australian listeners and say his name is Louis Goodman. For all I know it is Louie good Almond, but I'm gonna say Louis Dolman. And he was the first person to really start collecting this data. Uh. And he did it on index cards. Like I said, much of the early work and still a lot of the work they do, is categorizing and cataloging this stuff, just because you gotta know what card to look up if someone calls in to say they've been poisoned. And this was through the forties, and he established a hotline. Again this was only in the Chicago area, but you could for um, I mean seven basically call and get information as yeah, oh no. He would answer the phone day or night. Yep. He basically said, I'm starting this. I'm going to be by God, I'm gonna be known as the father is something, and if it's poison control centers, so be it. He had his little recipe book cards literally and would just sit there and thumb through him and read what he thought was going on. It's amazing. He was very famous. His catchphrase was hold please, and then you could hear him sorting through and be like, no, that's nothing. Eventually those made it to microfiche, right. So um, he was not just because he created these um index cards and started taking calls twenty four hours a day. That's not the only reason he was the father of the poison control center. He actually started founding with another guy, Ducker, Edward Press, the first poison control centers that were beyond like, you know, his bedroom at three in the morning. He founded I think eleven of them to start, and then eventually they created a trend that would be followed later where they were consolidated into a single one, which it turns out, as far as poison control centers is definitely way more efficient than having a bunch of different poison control centers, and they they had like nurses, they had doctors working there, they had people who knew what they were talking about, and they were creating like the first database, the first generalized information about poisonings, about toxicology, like really helping establish this field from taking data from real world examples that were the people who were calling in for help. So it was like a twofold thing. They were helping the people there, they were helping the doctors who were helping their patients UM, and they were also gathering data to create kind of this this foundation for understanding the effects of toxic chemicals on the human body. Yeah, and this was I think within five years of that Chicago system there were two d and sixty five centers opened in the US, but again still no sort of central database or national framework or even certification process. Uh. They were doing a lot of good work, but these first UM efforts were really different than today's in a couple of big ways. Uh. One, I mean the biggest one is that when you call now, you are the human that has just swallowed something. Calling Back in the day, if you're poison you called your doctor, then the doctor would call the poison control center and get their advice from there. And I think nineteen sixty one is when these direct calls from the public started to be introduced, which was a big, big, super necessary change, so that I mean, that is a huge deal to to to just go straight to poison control center because before you had to go to your doctor and then they went to the poison control center. And apparently that's still the case in a lot of European countries, but in the United States you can just call somebody who knows that they're talking about with poisons. And that is a really big um effect that poison control centers have is they prevent unnecessary healthcare spending because, as we'll see, the vast majority of UM calls to poison control centers can be resolved like at the place it's happening, whether it's work or whether it's at your house or something like that. You don't actually have to go to the hospital. So if you're not showing up to an emergency room or a doctor's office or something, that means that's time that somebody else who does need to be there can be be having attention paid to them, and it's just less money spent on healthcare for you showing up. And I saw in some Massachusetts Rhode Island poison control center website they estimated that for every dollar invested into a poison troll center, it saves thirteen dollars in healthcare spending and lost productivity. It's amazing, it really is. And that's a huge function that they play. You know, you think of like poison control centers is basically being like, oh, I just accidentally drank some anti freeze or something, uh, and you know, I need to call and get some help. But there's you know, these other roles that are easily overlooked that are really important as well that they that they play. That's kind of evolved over time totally. Um. So I mentioned the two big changes over the years, uh, and one was that you call in instead of your doctor. The other big one was back then, in the early days, it was almost entirely centered around pediatric poisoning. Uh. And you know, we have some stats will get too later you can see why children are still the most poisoned UM in the population, just you know, from accidents. But it's uh, they just didn't have a lot of um data on adult poisoning back then, so it was really folk child focus and they could help with adult poisonings. It's not like they would hang up or anything like that, but it was kids getting their hands on poison as kind of the big concern. Yeah, so they're starting to develop in the thirties, forties, fifties, and then UM an important person named Leroy edgar Berney who was a Surgeon General of the United States in the late fifties. UM he got involved. He took an interest in the idea of poison control centers, started National Poison Awareness Week, I believe, and UM founded the National Clearinghouse for Poison Control Centers, which is it took that database idea that started out as index cards that Lewis Dolman created in his kitchen and and really kind of professionalized it and made it like this this big thing that everybody at all the poison control centers around the country could contribute to UM and making it this growing body of knowledge. And it also became something of a magnet for grant and funding and all that because everyone recognizes, you know this this role of collecting data for toxicology is really important, and that's where a lot of the funding, especially any federal funding that UM poison Control center might get is kind of aim toward. Yeah, and they were still at the time using literal carbon paper to create multiple copies of these things. I think in seventy four there was a commercial toxicology data set put together finally kind of internets called Poisondex. I love it. It's pretty good. UM still in use today. But it's it was funny reading all this stuff. It's like, I don't know if there's ever been an institution that was more crying out for the Internet to be born. Yeah, as far as just as we'll see with consolidation and efficiencies and sharing of information. I mean, the Internet changed every everything, uh, you know, as far as this stuff goes for the better. But UM poison Control role centers really like when you're mailing uh pamphlets around the country and you're putting things together with carbon paper and index cards and even microfiche, it's like all they needed was the Internet to really make it a robust system. Yeah, and they they did. I think they added by hand the Internet, right, Like fifty million incidents were eventually added a little by little. It's a lot of hard work to what became known as the National Poison Data System the MPDS, and that's still in in uh in use today. So there's a ton of information. Like every time you call poison control and they start a case that the details of that case end up being added to the poison data system. Um, and so that database is growing, you know, every day. Should we take that second break? I think? So, all right, let's take another break, and we'll flash forward to the wild seventies and eighties and see what was going on in the poison control centers. Okay, chuck, it's the seventies and anybody at the poison control centers are taking pills themselves sometimes have to call in for help. Um. The eighties weren't much better, and there's some other stuff going on. Yeah, So in the seventies are um with the advent of more people abusing pills, that became a larger focus of poison control centers and the toxicology. I think in seventy four was when the prescription pill bottles, and I think we talked about this in the wasn't the title at all? No, because that was over the counter prescription pills were in nine and seventy four. As far as child proofing, and that really made a marked difference over the next couple of decades and kids being poisoned by by drugs. Yeah, between seventy four and ninety six, the incidents of kids dying from prescription pill poisonings decreased by So that was a really good federal law. And what's interesting is because of that law, and because of these information campaigns that were drummed up to kind of like not just let parents know about, you know, the hazards of of dangerous chemicals, but also let kids know too, poisonings of children actually declined so dramatically that there was a vacuum left open, basically free time that toxicologists and poison centers had to start investigating and better understanding adult poisoning incidents as well. So there's kind of a shift in the seventies and eighties in that sense. Yeah, and then in the sixties, another one of my favorite things in pop culture history happened is when they decided that, you know, we're using the skull and crossbones to indicate something as poisonous, and it turns out children love pirates, so that's probably sending a mixed message. So we need to we need to do something about this. So they mounted in Pittsburgh what's called the Mr. Yuck y Uk campaign, and it was to get a new logo basically that kids would not want to go drink the product like because they thought it was Pirates juice or whatever Pirates room. And uh they did a little thing where they got all these different logos and designs created, showed them to a bunch of kids and said which ones do you least like? Which one of these designs is yuck to you? And they chose a picture of Martin Screwley's face. It's amazing. Wow, that was quite a build up. I wish I could read out all the different faces I have on this page before I settled on Martin Screlly. Who else you gotta give us? I don't really think I can, because I took them off for reasons, because you can't go after someone hard unless it's a guy like that, you know. Yeah, I got to sure, sure, well, because I gotta know, I forget about everybody else. I just need to know. Uh No, it was actually what they called it was Mr Yuck and it was the what you see now a lot of times, is that sort of sick green um, emoji face that's really upset. It looks like it's kind of puky, and kids are like, I don't like that face. So they said, well, I guess that's what we'll start using. Then they said perfect, yeah, yeah that when that was pretty successful too. Um. And then one of the other things that really kind of happened during this time because I guess poison control centers were a bit of a victim of their own success. Um, there was this push for consolidation. Um. There was just so many poison control centers and now they were working thanks to the National Poison Data System. They were like working in tandem with one another, like they were sharing information and knowledge and that kind of stuff. But there were just too many of them. There's an unnecessary need or an unnecessary number. And then even more inefficiently, despite the fact that there were six hundred and fifty almost poison control centers in the United States, only about half of the American population was covered by a poison control center. Like, if you were poisoned in Topeka, say you had to drive to Kansas City and use the phone to call a poison control center. I made that up, but I bet it's pretty close. To accurate, and if those cities aren't correct, the general sentiment is okay, everybody, so just layoff. Uh. And even the most robust poison control centers were getting like maybe ten calls a day, So that's just really inefficient that. Like you said, they were sharing information. That was good, but it was ironically sort of the lack of budgeting that led them to start. It wasn't like they said, hey, let's just start shrinking are the number of these centers? They were kind of forced to and then the writing was on the wall, like there's a much more efficient way to do this, because we're talking about call centers, you know. Yeah, is there anything that Ronald Reagan couldn't do? Chuck? He never won an Academy Award, I believe it. Have you seen any of his movies? I haven't actually oh that he was not a great actor. No, they weren't good particularly so yeah, I haven't seen in those old westerns. So but the upshot of it, um, Well, he was also in like hell Cats of the Navy, that's where he met Nancy. And that was a World War two picture. Okay, I didn't see that one either. I didn't either. I've seen bits of it. How about that, you know, I have to he wasn't a great actor. But the upshot of it was UM that uh, that there were fewer poison control centers, and that actually panned out to be a good thing. It was surprising to me was despite the fact that automated switching UM was introduced in the seventies or the eighties at a T and T invented in the seventies, introduced in the eighties, it wasn't until two thousand one or two thousand two that there is a single national eight hundred number for poison control centers in the US. We should say that number. I agree we should. If we that would be totally US. I actually wrote it down on the front. Make sure. Yeah, it's an eight hundred to two two one to two two. You had to do it like a TV commercial. Okay, do it. That's one eight hundred two two two one to two two again one eight hundred to two two one to two two. That's we're making a joke, but that's what you're supposed to do. You know, three times you gotta do it. I think by two thousand two that number had shrunk to sixty four pccs in the US, and that's when that that toll free number was introduced. I'm sorry, it was in two thousand one, I think that was introduced, and by that time it went from six and fifty servicing half the United States to sixty four servicing all of the United States. Yeah, I think it's down to fifty five now. It's a lean, mean efficiency machine, thank you all, thanks to that national number. And so there's fifty five. That doesn't mean there's one in every state, and five states have two. There's actually some states that don't have any. Like I was saying, there's a shared regional poison control center between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, UM, but they there. So there's some states that don't have their own. But everybody is served because they can call that number. It gets routed to either your closest poison control center or a poison control center whose line isn't busy. Right then, because you're you know, what you're ingesting in, um, you know, San Diego is probably the same product that you would be jesting in, you know, Burlington, Vermont. So it doesn't really matter who you talked to. They're going to also be working from the same data set, the National Poison Data System. So whoever can get to the phone, UM, you're gonna be talking to somebody who is either a doctor, UM, most likely a nurse, or there are specialists a poison control specialists UM, who's basically an information person. They're not a they're not a healthcare provider, but they work under the auspices of say like a nurse or a doctor at the poison control center. And they are UM certified and ongoing educated in toxicology, so they know what they're talking about. Yeah, so you you could go work for a poison control center if you wanted to and not go to medical school or get medical training. You just get on the job training. I think there's a lot of pharmacists too to take these calls UM, and as efficiently as they run it is maybe this is why, uh, they are not like the day to day ops are still not federally funded. UM. They do get some federal funding, like through the CDC for data collection, and but a lot of it comes through affiliated institutions, local health departments. UM. Like I said a little from the CDC, and I think the there was a there was another act. The Poison Control Center Enhancement an Awareness Act provided. I think they provided the funds for the number, but they're still like, hey, you want to keep the lights on and keep it staffed. You're not getting federally funded, which is interesting. I mean it's working though, so I guess maybe there's something to be said for getting the federal government out of this situation. Sure, But at the same time, it makes you wonder like what they could be doing if they weren't chronically underfunded, Like if they didn't have to have bake sales, do contract poisonings for local mobs or um asked for donations like that. That that stat I got about one dollar being invested in turning into thirteen dollars saved. That was from a nation page for a poison control center. I mean, come on, like those things should be you know, they don't have to be like bloated or anything like that, but they shouldn't be underfunded. That's just dumb. Yeah, And I think, just so people don't misunderstand, I wasn't saying, like, good, the federal government, you know, funds too many things, but the fact that they are a lean, mean poison control machine. It doesn't surprise me that the federal government is involved. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're like, watch everyone as I turned into a fiscal conservative before your very eyes. Poof Um, alright, what what just happened? I don't know. Did you convert back? No? I'm good. That was close. So um, all right, what happened? You call a poison control center. You're gonna get that call answered, like you mentioned earlier, not necessarily by the one in Atlanta. Um, if they're busy, they may broute you to just a different one. They'll be very friendly, they'll keep you calm. Yeah, that's the impression I have. I didn't actually call one because I didn't want to. I was scared too, But apparently you can just to get information if you want. Sure. The first thing they're gonna do, though, is is route your call, like if you're uh, if you just mistakenly called the number, because the first one you could think about after a car accident, they would say they would route you to nine one one and say maybe like, boy, you must have hit your head or something that way, dumb you remembered eight hundred two two two one to two two over nine one one? Are you kidding me? Crazy things have happened. And also that's another thing too. You can call nine one one and they can actually route you to poison control centers. What goes both ways. But I saw frequently they get calls from people who are suffering or think they're suffering, like food poisoning. They don't handle that kind of thing, but they will make sure that you get to somebody who does. Right. So they're gonna they're gonna talk you through that to begin with reroute you if they need to. They're gonna start immediately providing uh treatment advice, like if it's an a real emergency, they're gonna they're gonna, you know, kind of tell you what to do in the immediate like minutes that you're on the phone, uh, consult with anyone else they need to. And if you do need emergency care, and we'll go over the stats here in a second of how many actually do, which is not as many as you would think. They will call the paramedics, they will call ahead to the local e er. They're gonna say, hey, you've got someone coming in. His name is Josh Clark. He drank pine sall he thought it was apple juice. And they'll say Josh Clark the podcaster. He's pretty dumb, apparently, And they will arrange kind of for all that ahead of time. They might even order test in the hospital, maybe a pizza, maybe a pizza or some other treatment. And they will even monitor and follow up on cases. Yeah until a Yeah, they keep and even if you're you know, if you're going to the hospital, they might, um they might coordinate you being transferred to a specialized center. Um. Like they are really, like I was saying, hands on. And then even if you stay at home, if they're like okay, this is good, You're you're fine, and like, uh, okay, this is fine. You were overwhelmed by oven cleaner fumes or something like that. Just you know, open the windows, go outside. You're you know, take a few minutes, but you're probably gonna be okay. I'm gonna stay on the phone with you whatever. After you get off the phone, they'll probably call you back in a half hour, an hour or something like that to check on you, to make sure you're still doing okay. Like I love poison control specialists. I think they're just the bomb. You know what, now I'm remembering we did call poison control one time when my daughter was a baby. Totally forgot about this. I don't even remember what it was. It turned out to be nothing, and it wasn't. I mean, she didn't drink anything or get poisoned, but we thought something might have happened. So you call and I remember now this triggered it because I remember them following up almost in a child welfare sort of capacity. It felt like, like, uh, did you do something. I remember getting grilled a little bit, or Emily getting grilled, and that's being like, man, poison control is no joke. Uh. I'll have to ask her tonight when she gets home. But I definitely remember now that that was just I remember the follow up part of it. Wow. And the fact that my daughter left. I remember that part. Yeah, that that part too. So um, if you do call and you you know, they walk you through the case and everything, like like we were saying, they'll they'll follow up, and all of that stuff gets logged into the National Poison Database and every eight minutes across all those fifty five poison control centers, all of their new information gets uploaded to the c d C, where there's a team of toxicologists who are engaged in toxo surveillance who scan all this stuff to look for signs of say, an outbreak of disease, and outbreak of poisoning is an outbreak of a new drug of abuse that people are suddenly, um you thing, and that is that is one of those big unsung functions of poison control centers is they can be the group who notices something that's happening all over the country to where you know, the individual e rs it's just one person coming in, but to these poison control centers, they are you know, there's fifty people suddenly around the country who are dropping dead from heroin. Well, that's not supposed to happen. What's going on with the heroin. There's actually a case in nineties six, I think, where poison control centers noticed that that people were showing up to e R s in the Northeast from heroin and they figured out that somebody had added scopel I mean to heroin and that people were having really bad reactions to it. And it was the poison control centers who noticed that those are what are called sentinel events, which is um a A there's a signal, there's a there's a basically exactly that something is afoot and um, they can help advise on how to treat it. They can contact the CDC. There's a bunch of stuff they can do. So they're like the first line of defense and monitoring that kind of stuff. Yeah, they've also in the last couple of decades been more involved with helping to tackle environmental toxic exposure. So like after the nine eleven attacks, obviously when there was you know, so much like bad stuff that first responders were breathing in, UM, the anthrax attacks that happened later on that year, UM, stuff like that, they're more and more involved in. So they're really more and more on the front lines of sort of tackling bigger things than my podcast host partner drank some pines all although that's up there. It tasted so bad too, but man, it looked like it was going to be some Apple two. Should we wind it out with some stats. Yeah, let's Although there's one other thing I want to say this. You know, we've been touting it's it's uh, it's virtues and for for good reason. But it's not a perfect system. Uh. And that was evidenced in I think two thousand twelve, two thousand and sixteen. I cannot remember, but there was, um they kind of famously poison centers missed the um the rash of tide pod poisonings that little kids were like, this thing looks delicious. Let me neat this UM and that that there were poisonings as a result, but there was no UH code that could be entered in the National Poison Data system. So the poison centers kind of knew what was going on, but they weren't really able to share this information and basically create this you know, Notice that this is a sentinel event because of basically a clerical problem, a clerical issue, and I think they've since solved it, but um, you know, it's still an evolving, ongoing process hammering out how to how to do this. But I think we were we were right in generally, you know, trumpeting how great this system is. Yeah, of course, UM, statistically a couple of years ago, in nineteen and of all the calls, and we're kids six and under, we're adults. Uh so I guess that leaves what between If you were under six, most of the poisonings were one in two year olds. More boys are poison than girls. Um, if you're thirteen and under, but more girls than boys if you're older than which is sad because it indicates the spike in self harm that poison control centers see as kids enter the teenage years, and it is largely girls. It's not exactly like girls just leaving boys in the dust, but they're definitely in the majority. UM or they're in the lead, I guess when it comes to self harm as far as poison control statistics go. But UM, that's also seen in the UH. The unintentional poisonings, like two percent of kids six and under, UM, they're poisonings are unintentional. Adult sixty are unintentional. With teenagers only thirty three percent of the poison calls that come in are unintentional. The rest are and are considered either self harm or it's like a drug overdose, which they're not setting out to overdose on drugs, but it's still considered intentional and the fact that they intentionally injected themselves or snort died that thing, or you know whatever else you do with drugs. Right. UH. In nineteen I think a little more than seventy six total were accidental UM eight percent total. We're almost nineteen percent total were intentional. And I think sixty eight thousand calls that your work for animals. We did mention that animals, you know, they you still want to call your vet, but if your animal ingested a toxic poison from your house, you can call a poison control center to get kind of quick information. And then I think I said earlier Chuck that like you can just call and ask them questions and they're totally cool with you. Like, there's a decent number of calls that come in every year from people saying like, hey, I want to take the St. John's warp, but my doctor prescribed me this um you know this heart medicine. Is that going to go okay with that party? Those would be right. Those would be the people that you would call and they will give you the info that you need and if you're looking around your house and wondering what's gonna do it. The top culprits for accidental poisoning at eleven p eleven and a half percent were cosmetics and personal care products. Imagine that, Well, they're so frequently left in, you know, easy to grasp places. They also smell good, they taste good one percent more than household cleaners. And I think at nine percent. You've got pain relief medications. Uh yeah, also algae blooms, toxic mushrooms, sharden batteries. Those are also problematic too. I think though sixty six of all cases are resolved at home, at least they were in nineteen, so that is, you know, it's a pretty decent majority. What's the number again, chuck two two two one to two two. Yeah. You can also go to poison help dot org. That's the Poison Control Center's website, and you can actually report online too, So there you go. Um, only if you have a poisoning or a good question. I guess too. Um. But since we said a good question, of course everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this a couple of quick corrections. This is too for your money. Hey guys, Dr John Vera Hoven my physical metallurgy professor. Yeah, was from the Superior Iowa's eight not University of Iowa. I'm sorry, goose that one up. We have a proud metallurgy tradition, including the purest uranium used in the original Manhattan Project experiment produced by Dr harveyville Helm ghost cyclones, and that's from Bryan Sutton. Sorry about that, Brandon, all of these cyclones out there, I apologize. And then this is another one. This is from doctor Great Art, a k a. Doctor Mark staff Brandle, docent and associate Professor Emmett, emeritus in Switzerland, says there was much to compliment about the art mystry show, but I have one small complaint. Uh Caravaggio signature and the Malta aft altarpiece. Uh. The f is very well known and not a mystery. There are thousands of paintings by hundreds of artists with this. It is uh. Indeed, it is certainly an abbreviation for facet. The best translation would be was made by uh. This email message e g. Is f Mark staff brand Old wink wink. So he says that was really not a mystery and that was a common thing so we did not know that. Well, thank you Dr great Art, and also thank you Brin for that. And also I think I said that the KFC YUM Center was in Lexington when it's well, you don't confuse those two. That's it's very bad. No, I'm just gonna go ahead and say I've been secretly trolling everybody that I'm well aware of all of these very big there right. Yeah. Sorry everyone, I'm so sorry. I probably won't be back after this. Um so, I guess in the meantime, if you want to send us an email or send it off to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.