Boston Personal Injury Attorney Blog
According to a recent news report from WHDH, children at a local daycare ingested a detergent mixture while they were supposed to be under close staff supervision. The mixture was supposedly mistaken for water.
Witnesses say after a number of children ingested the detergent and water mixture, staff became aware of the issue, and they immediately called parents and authorities, though they stated no child appeared to become sick as a result of drinking the solution. Notifying parents and calling poison control was part of the required protocol in the case of an accidental ingestion of a potentially dangerous substance.
The local fire chief said while he was dismayed this had occurred, he was only a little surprised. He had actually heard of this happening at other daycare facilities and schools in his jurisdiction.
While it does not appear anyone was injured, the fire chief and parents are concerned staff and management at the daycare called parents and poison control, but did not call local EMS services to physically come to the school and check on the children’s safety. The parent company of the daycare center said it will retrain staff on what do in the case of an emergency, and, while they did follow protocol, they should not have hesitated to called 911 and seek immediate medical assistance from EMTs or other first responders.
Company officials also say they will retrain staff on appropriate handling and labeling of cleaning solutions, so this will not happen again.
While it is fortunate no child was harmed in this accidental ingestion of cleaning fluid, as our Boston daycare accident lawyers can explain, not every child and parent is as lucky when a preventable accident occurs a daycare or school. Some cases result in serious personal injury or death from accidents, which could have been easily avoided with proper care and supervision. When an accident could have been avoided with ordinary care, it is not merely an accident, but an example of negligence in the context of a personal injury lawsuit.
If you have a child at a daycare center who comes home, and it seems like something is not right, it is best to take your child to a doctor for an evaluation immediately. Some injuries are not readily apparent absent what parents typically describe as unusual behavior. While it is easy to assume it may be nothing, and it seems best to wait and see if anything is really wrong, sometimes waiting can result in serious personal injury or even death. It is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to your child’s safety.
You should also contact your child’s daycare provider to see if anything happened you should know about. Unfortunately, they will probably tell you nothing happened, since, if they were aware of an accident or incident, they were required to notify you immediately. If an accident happened and they did not know, it means it happened outside of their supervision, or they did see what happened to your child and hoped you would not find out.
Going to a doctor is not only important for your child’s health, but will also create a record of when your child first started experiencing symptoms, and this record may be very helpful to your daycare injury attorney in proving a negligence case.
If you are injured in an accident in Boston, call Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers for a free and confidential appointment — (617) 777-7777.
Additional Resources:
Children ingest detergent mixture at Windham daycare , May 9, 2015, WHDH News
More Blog Entries:
New Guidelines for Identifying Causes of Newborn Brain Injury, October 21, 2014, Boston Personal Injury Lawyer Blog