[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 13, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH'S MR. YUK 
                       POISON PREVENTION PROGRAM

                                 ______


                         HON. WILLIAM J. COYNE

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 12, 1996

  Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to an important 
member of the public health community who celebrates a 25th anniversary 
this month. Since his arrival in 1971, Mr. Yuk has served an important 
symbol in preventing child poisonings. His green grimace is a familiar 
reminder to children and adults alike that many common household goods 
can be deadly if ingested. His important contribution to the effort to 
reduce childhood poisonings deserves special notice this month, as 
March is National Poison Prevention Month.
  Mr. Yuk was developed under the direction of Richard Garber, former 
director of the Institute of Education Communication at Children's 
Hospital of Pittsburgh. In the effort to replace the traditional skull 
and crossbones symbol--it had become associated with swashbuckling 
pirates and buccaneers rather than with harmful substances--the 
fluorescent green and black face was determined to be the most 
revolting to children.
  Mr. Yuk and the Pittsburgh Poison Center comprise the first and 
largest poison prevention awareness program in the Nation. In the 25 
years that Mr. Yuk has been around, over 650 million Mr. Yuk poison 
prevention stickers have been distributed to households across the 
United States and the United Kingdom. This year, Reykjavik, Iceland 
joined the Mr. Yuk poison prevention program as part of its effort to 
reduce the incidence of childhood poisonings.
  The Pittsburgh Poison Center, affiliated with the Children's Hospital 
of Pittsburgh, has grown from a small, local initiative in 1971 to a 
major center--one of only 42 certified regional poison information 
centers in the United States--that responds to 140,000 calls per year, 
of which 40,000 are actually poison emergencies. The center is open 24 
hours a day and employs registered nurses who are clinical 
toxicologists and certified specialists to provide lifesaving poison 
information to residents of Western Pennsylvania. Research shows that 
90.4 percent of all poisonings occur in the home and 54 percent of all 
human exposures in 1994 occurred in children under 6 years of age. 
Since Mr. Yuk's arrival, the number of poison-related deaths has 
dropped in Allegheny County, PA; from between three and five per year 
to between one and two.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that my colleagues will join me in recognizing 
the critically important work of the dedicated staffs at poison centers 
across the country in preventing illness, injury, and death from 
poisonous substances. I also wish a happy 25th anniversary to Mr. Yuk 
and the Pittsburgh Poison Center and urge that, as a nation, we 
continue to support successful and cost-effective public health 
programs like the Pittsburgh Poison Center's Mr. Yuk Program.

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