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Poisoning

Scary stuff: Halloween hazards are not just for kids

Kim Painter
Special for USA TODAY

Halloween is supposed to be a little scary. But if you are worrying about your kids receiving poisoned candy from strangers — something never actually documented in the USA — you probably are worrying about the wrong thing. (Although a razor blade was found a Snickers in Ohio on Thursday.)

You also might be worrying about the wrong family members: While young children face Halloween health and safety hazards, teens and adults do, too. So do pets.

Here are a few real things to worry about as the holiday approaches.

Cars and drunken drivers

A child in an angel costume approaches a busy street on Halloween.

This is the biggie. Halloween is the deadliest day of the year for young pedestrians, with twice as many deaths as on a typical day, according to auto insurer State Farm. Most at risk: kids ages 12 to 18 — the ones often roaming the streets without parents and with distractions like friends and cellphones.

"It's good to have a cellphone with you but not to be texting when you are crossing the street," says Kate Carr, president and CEO of Safe Kids Worldwide, a non-profit organization. On Halloween, as on other nights, "distracted walking" is a big hazard for teens, she says.

Another hazard for everyone on the streets: drunken drivers. As Halloween has become a more adult holiday, it also has become a major drinking occasion, says the National Highway Safety Administration. The share of fatal crashes involving drunken drivers rises from the usual 30% to nearly 50% on Halloween, the agency says. About 20% of pedestrian deaths on Halloween involve a drunken driver.

Safety officials say they are especially worried about drunken driving this year, with Halloween falling on a Saturday — so they are encouraging communities to step up enforcement efforts.

Best advice, as always: If you drink, don't drive.

Cuts, falls and other injuries

Thousands of people are injured carving pumpkins each year, says the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

About 4,400 people in the United States visited emergency rooms in 2013 for Halloween-related injuries, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. More than half were adults.

The most common mishaps, accounting for 56% of cases: pumpkin carving injuries. "It's very common to see finger and hand injuries," after carving slip-ups, says Ryan Stanton, an emergency physician in Lexington, Ky. People usually slice into the hand holding the slippery gourd, he says.

One tip for pumpkin artists: Use tools designed for the job, rather than ordinary kitchen knives. Tests by Consumer Reports and by medical researchers have found that special pumpkin-carving tools sold online and in many stores are safer, partly because they are smaller and easier to control.

Falls — often related to tripping over costumes or putting up decorations — are the next most common cause of injury.

Sticky dental disasters

When it comes to your teeth, Halloween candies are not created equal. Sticky stuff may do more damage than soft chocolates, dentists say.

Next week may be especially busy for dentists and orthodontists, and not because of the sugar in all that Halloween candy. Instead, it's the sticky stuff — the Milk Duds, caramels and Tootsie Rolls, capable of pulling out crowns and fillings and damaging braces and other dental work.

As kids work their way through candy bags, business "does tend to pick up a little bit," says Edward Moody, pediatric dentist in Morristown, Tenn., and president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.

Adults can fall victim, too, says Chiann Fan Gibson, a Chicago-area dentist and vice president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry.

Though it did not happen on Halloween, her own husband once pulled out two crowns with a Sugar Daddy caramel sucker, she says.

Of course, dentists do worry about the sugar. That's why Moody suggests parents and children go through the candy haul together, pick out a few relatively tooth-friendly favorites — like chocolate bars – and then put away or give away the rest.

Poisoned pooches

Dogs and chocolate don't mix. That's one reason calls to the poison control center at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) go up at Halloween, says veterinarian Tina Wismer, medical director of the center in Urbana, Ill.

Chocolate contains a compound that can cause vomiting, diarrhea and even seizures and death in dogs, she says. And dogs do have a sweet tooth — meaning left alone with a pillowcase full of candy, they might get in trouble.

Raisins and the artificial sweetener xylitol can also sicken dogs, Wismer says. So it's best to keep all sorts of human treats stashed away.

Another tip: Don't give in to pressure to put your pets in costumes if they are not the dressing-up sort. "Some dogs don't mind being dressed up," Wismer says. "Others absolutely hate it." That can cause a lot of stress — and some dogs might even try to chew the unwanted clothes right off their backs, she says.

Some dogs enjoy wearing costumes; others get stressed out, experts say. And no dog should eat chocolate -- it's poisonous to them.
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