🛡️ Safety Lab · Pharmacy-Reviewed
Toxic Substances Around Babies — What Parents Need to Know
The household products, medicines, and garden plants that pose the greatest risk to babies and young children — and emergency steps.
The household products, medicines, and garden plants that pose the greatest risk to babies and young children — and emergency steps.
Every year, thousands of children in the UK are admitted to hospital following accidental poisoning or ingestion of toxic substances. The vast majority happen at home. The majority are preventable.
A single button battery lodged in the oesophagus can cause severe internal burns within 2 hours and be fatal. The injury occurs because the battery generates an electrical current in the moist tissue, creating hydroxide ions that burn through it. A battery that appears dead is still capable of causing this injury.
Medicines: Iron tablets, adult paracetamol, sleeping tablets, and blood pressure medications are acutely toxic to children in small quantities. All medicines must be in a locked cabinet.
Laundry and dishwasher pods: Concentrated caustic chemicals causing severe burns. Colourful, squishy, and attractive to toddlers. Always locked away.
Alcohol: Children metabolise alcohol differently. A quantity not dangerous for an adult can cause severe hypoglycaemia in a young child.
Common UK toxic plants: peace lily · foxglove · yew · mistletoe · oleander · laburnum · monkshood · lily of the valley. Check every plant in your home and garden against the NHS or RHS toxic plant list before your baby becomes mobile.
Call 111 if unsure whether a substance is dangerous. Call 999 if your child is unconscious, fitting, having difficulty breathing, or has swallowed a button battery. Do not make your child vomit. Take the container to hospital so the clinical team can identify the substance.
NHS Poisoning first aid · CAPT · NPIS · Reviewed April 2026.