• The effect of exposure depends partly on how long the contact lasts and how much poison gets into the body, and partly on how much poison the body can get rid of during this time. Exposure may happen only once or many times.
• Acute exposure is a single contact that lasts for seconds, minutes or hours, or several exposures over about a day or less.
• Chronic exposure is contact that lasts for many days, months or years. It may be continuous or broken by periods when there is no contact. Exposure that happens only at work, for example, is not continuous. Chronic exposure to small amounts of poison may not cause any signs or symptoms of poisoning at first.
• It may be many days or months before there is enough chemical inside the body to cause poisoning. For example, a person may use pesticide every day.
• Each day the person is exposed to only a small amount of pesticide, but the amount of pesticide in the body gradually builds up, until eventually, after many days, it adds up to a poisonous dose. Only then does the person begin to feel unwell.
• WHO states that a poison is any substance that causes harm if it gets into the body. Harm can be mild for example, headache or nausea or severe for example, fits or very high fever, and severely poisoned people may die.
(Contributed by Dr Sudhir Gupta)
• Acute exposure is a single contact that lasts for seconds, minutes or hours, or several exposures over about a day or less.
• Chronic exposure is contact that lasts for many days, months or years. It may be continuous or broken by periods when there is no contact. Exposure that happens only at work, for example, is not continuous. Chronic exposure to small amounts of poison may not cause any signs or symptoms of poisoning at first.
• It may be many days or months before there is enough chemical inside the body to cause poisoning. For example, a person may use pesticide every day.
• Each day the person is exposed to only a small amount of pesticide, but the amount of pesticide in the body gradually builds up, until eventually, after many days, it adds up to a poisonous dose. Only then does the person begin to feel unwell.
• WHO states that a poison is any substance that causes harm if it gets into the body. Harm can be mild for example, headache or nausea or severe for example, fits or very high fever, and severely poisoned people may die.
(Contributed by Dr Sudhir Gupta)
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