UConn reveals what’s poisoning us most in CT homes. And a new one has joined the list.

Be careful at home, especially with small children around.

That’s where the vast majority of accidental poisonings happen — 82% — according to the Connecticut Poison Control Center at UConn Health. In 2023, 25,000 exposures were reported to the center, and it received 3,000 calls for information.

“So many, many of them, a good half of them, are little children that get into something,” according to Suzanne Doyon, medical director of the center.

Most poisonings at home are from ingesting cleaning supplies, but a large number are caused by children swallowing their parents’ medications or painkillers, such as Motrin, or even mom’s cosmetics, according to the center.

The center even hears about small children biting tips off crayons or swallowing the gel packs that come in pill bottles. Toys, plants, fentanyl, alcohols, unknown opioids and other foreign bodies are also on the list.

In addition to the person’s own residence, other residences had 3% of poison exposures, workplaces had 2% and schools had 4%, UConn data show. Hartford and New Haven counties had the highest number of exposure cases reported in 2023, each at 23% of the total, UConn data show.

Few of these tend to be serious. About half, 47%, are of minimal toxicity with no follow-up. Also, 19% of the 2023 exposure cases were managed in a health care facility and “treated/evaluated and
released,” UConn reports. In the cases managed in a health care facility, 4% were admitted to a critical care unit.

In case initiated by a health care facility, Yale New Haven Hospital had the most in 2023, with Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Hartford Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital, Danbury Hospital, Stamford Hospital, Middlesex Hospital behind it, in descending order of cases, data show.

There were a reported 1% of poisoning deaths from exposures in 2023, the center reported.

When it comes to teens and older adults, attempted death by suicide are the most serious reported. Older adults making mistakes with their medications and overdosing are also an issue, as are suspected cases of abuse, according to the UConn data.

New worries

But lately, Doyon said, a new source of poisonings has been reported to the center: Ozempic and Wegovy.

They both consist of the drug semaglutide. Semaglutide, which lower blood sugar levels. can cause hypoglycemia and therefore “shakiness, sweating, irritability, confusion, dizziness, headache, blurred vision, and in severe cases, loss of consciousness or seizures,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

Wegovy is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for weight loss. Ozempic is approved to treat diabetes, though it also results in weight loss.

“These injectable products are meant to be injected once a week,” Doyon said.

“We’ve been called a number of times because the patient injected themselves daily … instead of once a week so after the second or third injection … they start developing some nausea and vomiting that’s really intractable, like it won’t stop and they seek medical attention,” Doyon said.

Ozempic comes in a pen, which is dialed to the correct dose.

“For some patients this is difficult.” Doyon said. “They don’t quite know how to do the dial-up and they dial up too high. … So we’ve had patients who basically dialed the wrong dose and ended up with an overdose.”

Some patients who can’t stop vomiting end up in the hospital Emergency Department, Doyon said.

She said some people also have gotten the drug from illegitimate clinics and it may not be true Ozempic or Wegovy.

“The product is not purchased in a retail pharmacy,” she said. “It’s actually not manufactured by one of the legitimate manufacturers of this. It’s a fake product. It’s a product that’s been put together by we don’t know who, and those people have injected themselves with it, and they’ve run into a few problems.”

Doyon said people should get semaglutide products only from reputable pharmacies.

“Those should be the only products that people use and stay away from everything else,” she said. “It’s way, way too dangerous.”

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.