Shobha Bhaskar, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Shobha Bhaskar, a Pediatric Hospitalist with St. Louis Children's Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, and I'm also a Mom Doc.

Melanie Cole (Host): During the holidays, there's so many common hazards your kids can get into, and they can take a fun holiday time and turn it into disaster. Welcome to MomDocs, the podcast from St. Louis Children's Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole, and we're talking about protecting our kids from common holiday hazards in the home.

Dr. Bhaskar, thank you so much for joining us and welcome back to the show. So let's talk about some of these hazards. The first thing that comes to my mind, and when my kids were little, is the kitchen and cooking because the holidays are all about the food and being together. And I spent a lot of time in my kitchen cooking, but I used to put up baby gates to keep the kids out of the kitchen because there's hot foods and knives.

And it's, I still get intrusive thoughts, even thinking about it. Tell us a little bit about the kitchen and what we need to really look out for.

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: Yeah, hi, Melanie, thanks for having me here. Yeah, absolutely. Holidays are a great time to come together with friends and families and enjoy the festivities, but like you said, you know, you have to be especially careful with some of the safety issues, accidents, and health hazards around various aspects of these holiday festivities.

So, talking about kitchens, mainly about food preparation and food safety. And being in the kitchen, obviously you're at risk for burns and fire hazards. So, just like any other time of the year, just making sure the kids are not close to hot pots and pans, stove tops, ovens; that's the first thing that comes to my mind. So making sure that you're doing the cooking on the back burners or, not having the kids have access to hot pans and pots and pans near the edges of the countertops or having the oven doors closed. It's that time of the year when you're cooking or baking stuff and making sure the oven doors are promptly closed because even a few seconds of having them open and the kids touching them can cause major burn injuries.

Host: Well, it can, and I think a great rule of thumb is when you're doing so much cooking, see if there's somebody that can watch the kids, keep them out of there. Because I always think, you know, you're rinsing potatoes and you're cooking pasta and hard boiling eggs, and there's always hot water around, like you said, and it's just so easy for those little ones to get under foot and plus things drop on the floor. Even maybe we're cutting something spicy or the knife drop. I just, the whole thing, that's really, to me, one of the biggest hazards. Now we're going to move along cause we've got a lot of these in this list we want to talk about, but let's talk about alcohol as you and I are talking about the fun things, the cooking and the kitchen and all of that. There's alcohol around, usually a bar set up, people leave their drinks sitting around and we've got teenagers and tweens and stuff running around.

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: So with alcohol, basically, it's that time of the year when there is alcohol available, the adults are using alcohol with food and it's not uncommon to see open bottles of alcohol lying around the house or leftover portions of alcohol in the glasses sitting around, and the little ones can commonly mistake these for fruit juices and accidentally consume them and that can cause accidental ingestion.

And having open bottles of alcohol around the house, definitely a big risk for teenagers you know, it's tempting for them to try it or allow them access to these bottles of alcohol. And, that's something that you don't want happening. So making sure that the leftover alcohol is disposed of promptly after the party is over, or putting away these bottles of alcohol in however ways you do it, you know, some people have locked wine cabinets or alcohol cabinets, so whatever way people do it, you know, just making sure it's put away promptly is very important.

Host: I agree with you and sticking to this thread here, food, we've got bowls of nuts and candy and pretzels, and there's all kinds of food out all the time. And if there's little ones and they're crawling and they can pull themselves up to table height, or if they're toddlers and maybe there's allergies or little cousins come over or friends, what do you think about when we keep those bowls of food around on coffee tables and such like that?

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: That's a big issue. The holidays, especially, you have snacks lying around the house and the common snacks around holiday time are candies, hard candies, various flavors of popcorn and pretzels, like you mentioned, and all these for the little ones, they're big choking hazards.

So just making sure that you're watching the kids or putting these away out of reach of these little kids is very important. And like you mentioned, food allergies is a big one. So you have people coming to your house, friends and families coming to your house. You're not aware of allergies of all these people who are going to be partaking in the dinner or food festivities.

Or they might be bringing stuff to the house and your kids might have food allergies. So just discussing these issues up front and making sure you at least know about the food allergies and the people who are visiting is important and it's incredible how many food allergies, anaphylactic reactions I see as an ER physician around holiday time.

So, what I stress is making sure you have an EpiPen available. Making sure that the EpiPen is not expired and up to date. That's most important. And, just be aware that tree nuts, peanuts, dairy, shellfish and fish. You know, these are the top food allergen groups that you want to be thinking about and discussing with the people gathering.

Host: Dr. Bhaskar, I still want to get to a bunch of other hazards that we think of, but as a Pediatric Hospitalist, what do you see most often? What do you see come into the ER? Is it, because we're going to talk about batteries and magnets and decorations and things like that, but what do you see most often?

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: The most common things I see are injuries. It could be burn injuries, fire related injuries, or injuries from sharp objects. So usually around holiday decorations, you're using ornaments or little things from toys and gifts, which can be choking hazards, or holiday lighting is a big source of fire hazard, and it can be lighting outside the house or inside the house, the tree lighting; these are all big fire hazards, especially with faulty connections, a loose socket, frayed wires.

So these can be a fire hazard. But the injuries I most commonly see are when kids are trying to open these gifts and toys, the wrappers or the gift wrapping with knives and scissors. I see a lot of lacerations and extremity injuries related to that. So just be careful, help them out and make sure they're opening in a supervised manner. And after you've used these gadgets, whatever, it's knives or scissors, put them away promptly because the little ones can easily injure themselves with these.

Host: Glad I asked you that question, because that's not one of the ones I would think of, is the gadgets used to open the presents, and yeah, there's always razor blades or scissors, there's knives around, especially with all the boxes we get these days, and the tape that's wrapped around them. That is such a great point.

What about batteries and magnets and things that come in all of the electronics that our kids are getting these days?

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: Yeah, so batteries and magnets are a huge risk for a couple of things. So both of them are small, hard objects, so they are choking hazards for the little ones. And talking about batteries, especially these small, flat lithium batteries, which are found in some remote controls, and these newer holiday cards have these small lithium batteries in them, those are not only choking hazards, but they leak easily, and they can be a big risk for corrosive poisoning.

So once these are ingested, even if they haven't caused choking or obstructive symptoms, they need to be removed immediately by endoscopy. So that's a big risk for both choking and corrosive poisoning. And as far as magnets are concerned, again, choking hazard. And if more than one magnet is ingested, even if they didn't cause any obstructive symptoms, these magnets can attract or attach across intestinal walls, and they can cause a huge risk for perforation.

So those need to be immediately removed endoscopically. So magnets and batteries are a huge risk for a couple of things; poisoning, choking, and some gastrointestinal surgical effects.

Host: Wow. I mean, there's so much really to think of when you have little kids, and now let's look at our decorations. We've got plants, we've got Christmas trees, menorahs, candles, different kinds of lighting, there's garland and string all around and lights plugged in. Tell us about all of these things and what kind of hazard that they pose.

I mean, obviously something like a menorah is lit until it goes out, but some of these other, tell us a little bit about the hazards that they could pose.

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: .Yeah, so with holiday decorations, there are quite a bit of issues to be just be aware of and to watch out in a proactive manner. So with the bows and the wires and ribbons, these are all big risk for strangulation for little kids. So just be very aware of those and put it away from reach of little kids.

And with the decorations, the little ornaments, some of these small little hard ornaments can be accidentally ingested and become choking hazards if they're aspirated. And most of these holiday ornaments are brittle and they are bright and colorful and kids have a tendency to put them in their mouths and they break easily.

So they can definitely cause lacerations or mouth injuries and definitely very dangerous if they're broken and ingested, so that can be a risk for perforation and stuff. Like you mentioned, holiday lighting with fire hazards with holiday candles and menorahs, and there is a fireplace usually which is lit up around this time.

And room heaters is another thing I can think of because it's wintertime and people have gathered and there is, uh, fireplace lit and the room heaters on. So all these can be risk for burns and fire hazards.

Host: One thing I wanted to ask you was, we mentioned alcohol and open drinks sitting around, but there's also purses sitting around and medication. And kids maybe that come into your house that are not used to your house, maybe they go into your bathroom. What about medications that we have? Because if grandma's coming over and she's got her blood pressure medication and somebody else has their medication, there's all these things around.

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: So glad you brought that up, Melanie, because we do see quite a few cases of accidental ingestions of therapeutic medications during holiday times. So making sure the medication cabinets are locked or definitely the medicines are put away in places which are high enough that it is out of reach for our kids is very important.

And you can have adolescents who you don't want some of the sedatives and some therapeutic medications, you don't want them to have access to these medicines. So putting those away out of reach of any kids, that's very important and the other aspect with medication that I always talk to my patients about, it's making sure, because you're traveling.

Holiday is a time when there's a lot of travel that happens. Making sure that your holiday travel medication kit is up to date, medicines are not expired, your EpiPen is not expired, your common things like Benadryl and fever medicines, they're all good and not expired. That's very important. And when you're traveling, the other thing is you're staying in hotels or you're staying in homes of family and friends, and they might not have childproofed their homes that you have done at home and you've taken for granted over months or years. So just be aware that the places you're staying might not be childproof and not be totally safe. Just be looking out for any of these hazards that your kids could be exposed to.

Host: Such an informative episode. Dr. Bhaskar, if you were to give us one piece of advice, a really important piece of advice for trying to mitigate some of the possibilities of hazards in our home at the holidays, because we want our holidays to be fun and be around family and have lots of love and gratitude and all of these things; tell us what you want us to know about keeping our kids and family safe.

Shobha Bhaskar, MD: Yeah, absolutely, Melanie. Holidays are absolutely one of the most favorite times of the year for me. And as long as we're careful of some of the issues we have discussed, we can definitely safely enjoy the festivities with our loved ones. To me, I think one thing to do is make a good list of the foods to prepare, the events to do, just make a list of the safety issues, keep a list of, you know, holiday decorations, lighting, gifts and toys, choking hazards or food allergies, a small list on your phone or on a notepad and make sure you just run through your mind that you have childproofed your home and your environment for these issues because there's not one thing that you can just pick and be careful about.

It's like the list of eight to 10 things that you really have to focus on and make sure you're covered on all these things. So I say keep a little checklist and make sure you have covered all these.

Host: That's great advice. That's really, really excellent advice. And we went through all of those lists. So listeners, you can listen again and just write it all down so that you're checking for all of your decorations and your kitchen and your food and medications and all the things that Dr. Bhaskar discussed with us here today. She's the expert. So this is great information. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us today. And for more advice and articles, please check out the MomDocs website at ChildrensMD. org. That concludes another episode of MomDocs with St. Louis Children's Hospital. Please, if you found this informative, share with your friends and family on your social channels. We are learning from the experts at St. Louis Children's Hospital together. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for tuning in.