Keeping Kids Out Of Harm's Way

Parents and caregivers need to do more than rely on child-resistant packaging to protect children from being poisoned, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Its chairman, Hal Stratton, visits The Early Show Monday to offer some tips to keep your children safe.

The goal of National Poison Prevention Week, this year held March 16-22, is to help reduce the number of poisonings each year involving children under 5 years old. The nation's poison control centers receive more than one million calls each year about unintentional poisonings of children under 5 from medicines and household chemicals.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the American Association of Poison Control Centers, and the Poison Prevention Week Council urge parents to use products with child-resistant packaging; keep medicines and chemicals locked up away from children; and call the new national toll-free number for poison control centers: 1-800-222-1222 if a possible poisoning occurs.

The CPSC requires child-resistant packaging for 30 categories of medicines and household chemicals. For aspirin and oral prescription medicine, special packaging has saved the lives of more than 900 children since the early 1970s.

On Monday, find out all you need to know about poison prevention.