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A toddler in Kent, Washington, was poisoned by liquid nicotine last week, Seattle's KIRO-TV reported.
The 22-month-old found the bottle of the liquid, which her dad uses in e-cigarettes, and drank it, said the girl's mother, Nicole Oliver.
“Her eyes were rolling back into her head,” Oliver said.
Oliver said she didn’t know what the toddler, Winona, drank but later found the bottle.
“I saw it was her dad’s e-cigarette vapor. In that second, it clicked into my head: I was going to lose my daughter,” Oliver said.
Oliver called 911. Medics arrived and called the Washington Poison Center, then took Winona to Valley Medical Center.
Dr. Alexander Garrard of the Washington Poison Center said calls for liquid nicotine poisoning are skyrocketing. In the last few years, calls are up more than 700 percent, he said. Garrard said children think the liquid is candy. It comes in flavors like strawberry and sour apple and smells sweet. He said ingesting it can be deadly.
“It can cause stomach upset, increased heart rate, high blood pressure – even seizures and coma. Ultimately death, if they get enough of it,” Garrard said.
He said the bottles look like eye droppers. They’re easy to open.
“Child-resistant caps aren’t mandated. It’s a screw-on cap, and a child can easily open it,” Garrard said.
Doctors watched Winona at the hospital. She was able to go home five hours later. It was an experience her mom doesn’t want other parents to experience. Oliver said that if she had known the bottle was in her home, she would have put it out of reach or locked it up.
"It was probably the scariest waiting game of my life, to think I could have lost her," Oliver said.
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