Will mothballs keep snakes away from your house? Before you decide to use them, get the facts from experts from the Blue Ridge Poison Center.
Most people can't tell the difference between poisonous mushrooms and safe ones. Find out how to protect yourself and your family from a deadly mistake.
I have never seen a copperhead near my house in Albemarle County, but it seems I’ve just been unlucky. (I like snakes.) In September, many of my friends were reporting sightings of this distinctive-looking venomous snake. [caption id="attachment_9085" align="alignright" width="350"] This copperhead was spotted on the Rivanna Trail in Charlottesville…
The story flooded my Facebook feed: A house in Missouri was infested with 5,000 brown recluse spiders. More than one of my friends said they’d just burn that house down if it was theirs. [caption id="attachment_9067" align="alignright" width="350"] The brown recluse (bottom) isn't established in Virginia but is often confused…
But now there’s a newer product that is serious: the colorful laundry pods or dishwashing detergent pods that look like toys or candy. The pods are about one square inch in size and feel squishy. They can have powder or concentrated liquid inside them, but it’s the concentrated liquid ones that cause severe illness in kids.
UVA’s Blue Ridge Poison Center gets 30,000 phone calls a year. When you hear that number, you might think of snakebites or toddlers finding cleaning products under the bathroom sink. [caption id="attachment_4482" align="alignright" width="300"] Medication mistakes are common before school when parents are busy and preoccupied.[/caption] But many of those…
There’s a lot of hype out there about spiders. This summer, I had a bunch of quarter-sized creepy crawly things with eight legs and white marks on their backs scurrying around my house. I just assumed they were black widows. I didn’t get much sleep. Then a few of my…
Huffing, bagging, sniffing … all terms commonly used to describe the act of inhaling dangerous household products. The Blue Ridge Poison Center states over 1,000 household products including typewriter correction fluid, cooking spray, nail polish remover, spray paint and glue can all be used in this manner. While most parents…
Poisonous snakes. Mention those words, and a lot of people freak out. When I told my co-workers I wanted to write about snakebites, one flinched and shrieked, “Ew, snakes!” Another refused to look at the copperhead photo in this post. But snakes aren’t as big a threat as we think…
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