Asia Pacific Journal of Medical Toxicology
Volume:5 Issue: 3, Summer 2016

The six daycares that participated in this study indicated that there is no regulation currently in place for the usage of play-dough in their daycare facilities. Play-dough can potentially accumulate and transport lead when played with. This vector has never been studied before in terms of being a route of lead exposure for children. This study aimed to determine whether or not playdough usage in daycares may be a hazard in terms of being a route of lead exposure for children.
Daycares in the Greater Vancouver were randomly selected based on convenience sampling. They were contacted by email and a follow up phone call to determine their eligibility. Play-dough was gathered in three time intervals from each daycare and analyzed semi-quantitatively. Three controls were also created to mimic the daycare’s play-dough usage, and to test whether the test kit could detect lead. The results showed that one of the daycares had lead levels ranging from 1-3ppm and one of the controls showed lead levels of 1-3ppm.
The test kits proved to be effective in determining lead based on the controls. One of the daycare’s play-dough had lead levels of 1-3ppm. Thus indicating that there is a possibility that play-dough can be a vector for transporting and accumulating lead. This study does have limitations in terms of the test kit used, and the lack of blinding of the researcher testing the samples.
The study was successful in generating an understanding of the potential link between play-dough usage and lead exposure for children. Therefore, the positive lead result found in one of the daycares can be used as a reference to guide future studies in this area.

Methadone is a product derived from heroin that is available in drug stores as a 1mg/ml syrup. Methadone is a long acting drug with a roughly 24-hour half-life . Poisoning from opiates is one of the most dangerous and prevalent causes of poisoning in Imam Reza hospital (North- East of Iran), and its pattern has changed in the form of increased poisoning from methadone in recent years. The goal of this study is to evaluate why methadone poisoning in children under 6 years old have been increasing in recent years
This cross-sectional study was done on all children referred to Imam Reza Hospital’s pediatric emergency room for cause and agent of poisoning during 2015, to identify the number and the most common cause of poisoning; evaluated demographic data showed methadone poisoning as the most common cause of accidental poisoning in children.
In one year 3395 child admitted in the pediatric emergency room, including 409 cases (12%) of intoxication; 256 of these cases had different opium poisoning (62.5%) and 69 cases (16.8%) had methadone poisoning. In methadone poisoning 39 cases were male and 30 female. 25-48 months and 4-24 months age groups had the most cases of methadone poisoning, respectively.
In the emergency center the most common poisoning is opioid compounds especially methadone, likely due to the availability of methadone syrup in pharmacies. Parents use methadone to give up addiction. Poisoning occurred because children like to open bottles and accidentally consume its contents.

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is one of the major toxic gases and the second most common cause of death in workplaces among toxic gas-related morbidities. H2S suicides using hospital-based data were studied in 2008. However, most cases did not involve ambulance transfer to the hospital because the victims of H2S suicide were usually found dead at the scene. H2S suicide-related data elucidating an overview of the patients were therefore not available. To clarify the mechanism of poisoning, H2S suicide victim data were obtained from the Yamagata prefectural police office. H2S suicide data from the Yamagata prefectural police office for the period 2007 to 2013 were obtained. All H2S suiciderelated data in Yamagata Prefecture were collected, including sex, age, location of suicide, source of hydrogen sulfide, and In this study, a total of 41 cases (29 men and 12 women) were included for analysis. The number of H2S suicides reached a peak in April 2008, with 14 cases being reported, followed by 10 in 2009, 10 in 2010, 3 in 2011, and 4 in 2012. The mean age of the victims was 31.8 ± 12.2 years (range: 18–77 years), and the median age was 28 years. Sources of H2S gas included cars (23 cases; 54%), rooms (8 cases; 20%), and bathrooms (5 cases; 12%). We also identified several cases of a novel suicide method, wherein H2S was generated in a plastic garbage bag that the victim would then place over their head or body into the bag. Most cases of H2S poisoning are not registered at hospital, therefore, the data on these victims need to be analyzed from police office data. H2S-related suicides are known to occur in confined places including cars or toilets; however a new form of H2S suicide using a sealed plastic bag is increasingly prevalent, possibly due to widespread sharing of this method on the internet.

Smoking damages sperm, making them less likely to fertilize eggs and making the embryos they do manage to create less likely to survive, as smoking degrades sperm protein needed for fertility and embryo survival. There exists a strong negative relationship between smoking and fertility due to the fact that genetic material in the sperm can be damaged by the chemicals in cigarette smoke. The available data do not conclusively demonstrate that smoking decreases male fertility. However, with much debate for its impact on various semen parameters, it is regarded as an infertility risk factor. Apart from genetic damage, we intended to study the membrane integrity of spermatozoa, a main factor in fertilization. Therefore, this study has hunted to assess the relationship between smoking and male infertility by evaluating the semen parameters and the membrane integrity of the spermatozoa by hypoosmotic swelling test among different subgroups of smoker, as per smoking index and non-smoker infertile males.
Membrane integrity of spermatozoa is analyzed by hypo-osmotic swelling test, the simplest and least expensive assay to assess the functional integrity of sperm-membrane among 204 infertile smokers who were subgrouped depending on the strength of smoking and 30 controls.
Infertile smokers showed decreased membrane integrity among asthenospermia, teratozoospermia, asthenoteratozoospermia, and oligospermic compared to infertile non-smokers with a significant variation (P Hypo-osmotic swelling test is an important tool for assessing the extent of membrane damage caused by smoking resulting in severity of infertility.

Paraquat is a herbicide that is used widely. Several voluntary and accidental paraquat poisoning have been reported in recent years. Gastrointestinal absorption of paraquat is rapid. Systemic effects include pulmonary injury, heart failure, acute renal failure and hepatic failure. Metabolic acidosis results from multi-organ failure. Due to these systemic effects, paraquat poisoning is associated with high rate of morbidity and mortality.
A 34-year old man has been referred from a nearby town to our educational hospital with abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, jaundice, and decreased level of consciousness since 12 hours ago. In his history, he declared that he had drunk a glass of green colored herbicide 2 days ago as a suicidal attempt. Four hours after ingestion, he was brought to a regional hospital by family and after 24 hours of observation, he was discharged. He was symptom free during the observation. His clinical features and laboratory results on arrival to our hospital revealed multi-organ failure. Despite aggressive supportive treatment , he died at the second day of admission.
this case report emphasizes on the importance of early admission and treatment of paraquat poisonings, regardless of symptoms, to save the patient's life. Many supportive treatments must be carried out for these patients.