Liquid Nicotine Killed An Innocent Toddler In New York

December 14, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 64 Comments

A toddler in New York has died after drinking from a bottle which is thought to contain liquid nicotine. The bottle was used as a refill for e-cigarettes. This latest development changes a lot of our perception about how these liquid nicotine products are marketed and presented.
The incident took place at a home in Fort Plain, New York last Tuesday. An ambulance call was received from the neighborhood due to reports of an unresponsive child. The child was taken to the Hospital immediately but was pronounced dead short while after. The local police described the incident as a tragic accident.
Sgt Austin Ryan of the Fort Plain police confirmed that the child had indeed drunk from a glass bottle containing liquid nicotine that did not have a child-proof cap. But he did not affirm that the bottle in question here was used to refill e-cigarettes.
The death of a child has created a huge backlash in the state especially after the local assembly and senate have already passed a bill to ensure child resistant containers on liquid nicotine.
The thing that is most striking is that these flavored liquid nicotine bottles are marketed just like fruit juices and also are quite catchy on the eye especially for toddlers. Well the American Association of Poison Control centers expressed concern that there are “currently no standards set in place that require child-proof packaging”.
CDC has said that 16 million children across 10 states including District of Columbia have legal access to electronic cigarettes as well. While 40 states have banned e-cigarette sales to those deemed under-age since 2010.

Rebecca McGhee

Rebecca McGhee is a valuable contributor for several publications and online platforms. Having graduates with a degree in Computer Science, her interest lies mostly in this area. Yet, she finds any tech-related topic or scientific topic is a challenge worth meeting. She enjoys turning her own research projects in worthy contributions that reach the large public. And mostly, she is grateful for all the feedback she receives from readers, as she believes it aids her in permanently improving her style of writing, beyond the scientific style she is accustomed to.

Nate

“Liquid nicotine” is not used in any vapor product. E-liquid contains a maximum of 3.6% liquid nicotine by volume. A typical one-year-old would need to consume several large bottles of high-strength e-liquid in order to ingest a potentially lethal dose of nicotine. But please, don’t let these inconvenient facts stand in the way of the alarmist, hysteria-inducing narrative you’re trying so hard to promulgate.
- Max
  
  E-liquid can contain as much as 48mg of nicotine in a refill vial. Since the lethal dose of nicotine for a small child or toddler is approximately 1 mg per kg of body weight and the average toddler weighs in at around 20kg, that would amount to more than 2 lethal doses in a single high-strength e-liquid container (not several bottles). Don’t worry though, no one is taking away your precious e-cigs. But don’t let that assurance stand in the way of your alarmist, ‘they’re gonna take away mah cigs’ narrative that you are so intent on pushing.
  And another thing, it’s not 3.6%. The high doses are usually 48mg or 3.6mg (per 3 drops). Assuming the average weight of a drop of water is 50mg than you’re looking at about 2.4% nicotine. Which is irrelevant since it’s not the % that kills you, rather the dose vs body weight. I could throw a lethal does of antifreeze in some water so the % by volume was very low and you probably wouldn’t want to drink it.
  
  But don’t take my word for it. You can read more about it yourself in these medical journals here:
  
  Dart RC (2004). Medical toxicology (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 601–604. ISBN 9780781728454.
  
  Baselt, R. (2008). Disposition of Toxic Drugs and Chemicals in Man (8th ed.). Foster City, CA: Biomedical Publications. pp. 785–788. ISBN 0-931890-08-X.
  
  Smolinske SC, Spiller SK, Spoerke DG, Wruk KM, Kulig K, Rumack BH (1985). “Paediatric nicotine overdose”. Veterinary and Human Toxicology 28 (4): 308.
  - Choy
    
    PWNED!!!!!
  - Rephlexie
    
    Those are some really scary numbers you have there. However, there is just one problem, there is no place found easily, even within the far reaching depths of the internet that sells eLiquid with the kind of Nicotine levels you are discussing.
    
    The way to come up with those numbers is to mix it yourself. Once we get in that realm of discussion we should be talking about whats in America’s medicine cabinets, which ingested in excessive portions, could potentially harm a child.
    
    You know what is really dangerous? Toothpaste.
    
    Death may result from ingesting as little as 2 g of fluoride in an adult and 16 mg/kg in children. Symptoms may appear with 3-5 mg/kg of fluoride. 2004 data: 1 death, 440 ER cases, 24,180 exposures reported to poison call centers. Most are kids under 6.
    
    Oops! Almost forgot, here are some scary medical data source science stuff to make Toothpaste the real problem here and not the parents for allowing their child to induce 4 bottles of Colgate..
    
    Jha SK, Singh RK, Damodaran T, Mishra VK, Sharma DK, Rai D. Fluoride in groundwater: toxicological exposure and remedies. J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev. 2013;16(1):52-66. [Medline].
    
    Felsenfeld AJ, Roberts MA. A report of fluorosis in the United States secondary to drinking well water. JAMA. Jan 23-30 1991;265(4):486-8. [Medline].
    
    Mowry JB, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Bailey JE, Ford M. 2012 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 30th Annual Report. Clin Toxicol (Phila). Dec 2013;51(10):949-1229. [Medline]. [Full Text].
    - arch stanton
      
      2.4% = 24mg/ml
      In humans the lethal dose of nicotine is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0mg/kg
      1ml (~1/5 of 1 teaspoon) would have enough nicotine to kill a 24kg (53lb) person.
      - Nate
        
        “In humans the lethal dose of nicotine is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0mg/kg”
        
        So the people who survived the ingestion of over 600mg must have been giants?
      - Skabb15
        
        or….it didnt happen, but whatever helps you think you arent arguing that water is dry.
      - Nate
        
        Fun fact: Antarctica’s made of water, and it’s the driest place on Earth.
      - arch stanton
        
        Antarctica is made of rock. It is a continent and very large. A very small part of it is considered the driest place on earth.
        Antarctica in neither made of water or the driest place on earth.
      - Nate
        
        The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two polar ice caps of the Earth.
        It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent and is the largest single
        mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million square km
        (5.4 million sq. miles) and contains 26.5 million cubic km of ice (6.36 million cubic miles).
      - arch stanton
        
        “It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent” (your words).
        Antarctica is a continent Nate. It is not made of water, even if it is largely covered by ice.
    - arch stanton
      
      What a misleading post.
      Not a single one of the 3 sources you site support your ridiculous claims.
  - jerry mander
    
    Don’t take my word for it but…..Thugs kill innocent toddlers everyday in drive by shootings, not a word is mentioned. Black lives matter but not to other blacks. Innocent babies are aborted everyday, does not matter to libs. Why this story? Obummer kills innocent people with drones. Cars kill innocent toddlers everyday, bicycles kill innocent toddlers everyday, swimming kills innocent toddlers everyday, doctors kill innocent toddlers everyday, dogs kill innocent toddlers everyday……….
    - Adam Knapp
      
      We’re talking about chemical overdose, not your racist fantasy world.
    - Skabb15
      
      jesus christ, someone should lynch you, you racist piece of sh!t.
      - Nate
        
        File under “great moments in unintentional irony.”
      - Skabb15
        
        or maybe, moron, it was intentional, as the very definition of irony is “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.” Stop talking. Everytime you make a new post you make someone realize that they shouldnt have agreed with a previous one.
      - Nate
        
        Were you born with the ability to read other people’s minds on the internet, or did you have to practice?
      - Skabb15
        
        No no no. its not mind reading, its simply not being an @$$hole piece of know it all garbage. Its really not that hard. For the rest of us….
      - Nate
        
        Come on, you can call me better names than that. Stop holding back.
      - Skabb15
        
        Thank you
      - Skabb15
        
        It all makes sense now
      - Nate
        
        As long as I’m a ruggedly handsome pigeon, then that’s fine.
      - jerry mander
        
        Libs hate guns, they kill innocent children every day.
      - jerry mander
        
        I’m racist because I tell the truth? Typical lib, call someone a racist when they have no argument.
  - Nate
    
    The average toddler weighs around 46 pounds? Is that your final answer?
- Skabb15
  
  wrong, nicotine is one of the most deadly poisons in the world and it takes a very tiny bit to kill an adult.
  - Nate
    
    Yeah, I totally die every time I get a couple drops of e-liquid on my hand. It’s a really horrific thing to behold.
    - Skabb15
      
      Dont assume that because you dont understand something, its wrong.
      - Nate
        
        Hey, I understand it better than most. Most of the skin on my hands is gone cuz the nicotine melted it off.
Joe

“innocent toddler” – is there any other kind?
- faryl
  
  That was my reaction reading this too.
  
  It’s like it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had happened to one of those corrupt toddlers you always see hanging out on the street corners, wearing leather jackets, holding their bottles of booze in tiny paper bags.
- velocipedes
  
  Demagoguery.
Alex Wheaton

Well, GEE…How did the infant get a HOLD of this poisonous liquid in the FIRST place??? Sounds like a LITTLE of the “backlash” should be against negligent parents!
- Mark Bonneaux
  
  if you have a toddler or know one, you know they can get into most anything quite quickly if they want to. I have more of an issue with it not having a childproof cap than assuming the parents were just negligent. for all we know this was on a shelf the parents assumed was out of reach for the kid but he/she found a way to get to it anyway (related anecdote: wife woke up one morning a couple of months ago to find our son sitting on our glass top stove, putting sugar by the handful into a pot, and stirring it with a spatula. he was still sleeping in a crib at the time, which he climbed out of, opened his closed bedroom door, closed it behind him, pulled a chair to the stove, got the pot and spatula out, and did all this about 9am. toddlers are creative man and don’t confuse it with parents being negligent.)
  - Nate
    
    It doesn’t matter whether there was a childproof cap. No person of any age is going to voluntarily drink a quantity of e-liquid sufficient to cause death by nicotine overdose. Ask anyone who’s ever inadvertently gotten a drop on their tongue.
    - Skabb15
      
      I love how you are arguing that nobody would do something that someone obviously did. What a self important, know-it-all, moron.
      - Nate
        
        Wow, so there’s no need to conduct an autopsy then? We should just take the parents’ word for it and give the medical examiner the day off?
      - Skabb15
        
        No, we should ignore you and everyone like you. How did you get anything but that from what I said? What a moron…
      - Nate
        
        Well, because you announced that the parents’ version of events “obviously” happened, even though it’s an open investigation, no autopsy has yet been conducted, and no toxicology report has been issued.
      - Skabb15
        
        if it turns out that that is what happened, can we get you to agree to kill yourself?
      - Nate
        
        Can I have sex with Scarlett Johansson first?
Carlme Dramer

Nate, 30–60 mg (0.5–1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans. Liquid nicotine e-liquid is sold in 24mg, 36mg, 48mg, 60mg, and 100mg concentrations. It is recomended that you dilute to below 24mg for vaping. Obviously a 1-year old could not consume “several large bottles of high-strength e-liquid”. What are you smoking?
- Nate
  
  We live in the second decade of the 21st century. The numbers to which you refer come from long-since discredited research that was carried out in the 1890s. As near as anyone can tell (it’s impossible to say for certain, since there are zero verified instances of someone actually dying from acute nicotine toxicity), the amount of nicotine required to kill an adult human being is 500mg at minimum and possibly as much as 1000mg.
  - Skabb15
    
    wrong again
    - Nate
      
      “The human toxicity of nicotine has become
      increasingly relevant in the past couple of years through marketing of
      new nicotine-containing products, such as smokeless tobacco and liquids
      for electronic nicotine delivery systems (electronic cigarettes) that
      are freely available in most countries. Standard textbooks, databases,
      and safety sheets consistently state that the lethal dose for adults is
      60 mg or less (30–60 mg), leading to safety warnings that ingestion of
      five cigarettes or 10 ml of a dilute nicotine-containing solution could
      kill an adult. The 60-mg dose would correspond to an oral LD50
      of around 0.8 mg/kg, a dose that is considerably smaller than the
      values determined for laboratory animals, which are ranging from 3.3
      (mice) to more than 50 mg/kg (rats) (Hayes 1982).
      
      Although an LD50
      of 0.8 mg/kg would implicate that the toxicity of nicotine is similar
      to or even higher than that of cyanide, fatal nicotine intoxications are
      relatively rare, and there are countless records of subjects who
      survived consumption of nicotine in amounts far higher than 60 mg
      (Larson et al. 1961). The most drastic example is probably survival of a suicide attempt with 4 g of pure nicotine (Schmidt 1931).
      While this is certainly an exceptional case, in which the amount of
      bioavailable nicotine was markedly reduced by vomiting, ingestion of
      tobacco or nicotine gums at doses up to 6 mg/kg nicotine was reported to
      evoke symptoms of intoxication without causing death (Malizia et al. 1983; Smolinske et al. 1988).
      These and many other literature reports on nonfatal nicotine
      intoxications are hardly compatible with a lethal dose of 60 mg or less.
      
      Several
      detailed reviews are available on fatal nicotine intoxications caused
      by either suicidal intent or accidents, latter mainly resulting from
      misusage of nicotine-containing solutions marketed as pesticides (Esser
      and Kühn 1933; Larson et al. 1961; Maehly and Bonnichsen 1963; Tiess and Nagel 1966; Hayes 1982; Corkery et al. 2010; Solarino et al. 2010). The postmortem data reviewed by Maehly and Bonnichsen (1963) and more recently by Corkery et al. (2010) and Solarino et al. (2010) revealed minimal nicotine blood levels of 2 mg/L, but rapid decline of blood nicotine after death (Sanchez et al. 1996) may have led to underestimation of the actual lethal concentration in delayed autopsies.”
      
      — Bernd Mayer, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Graz University
      - Skabb15
        
        Thank you for proving yourself wrong
      - Nate
        
        Thank you for graduating first in your class at the Pee Wee Herman Institute For Logical Discourse.
      - Skabb15
        
        Oh, Im sorry. You are correct. Studies from the 30s and 60s DO in fact show that nicotine is not a deadly poison. That is why we stopped looking at them decades ago when the tobacco industry was using them to argue that they shouldnt be regulated. Im surprised you didnt cite a study showing that smoking is good for unborn babies and weight loss. Moron. Would you like to continue to insist I show exactly why you are a moron?
      - Nate
        
        Nicotine is only a deadly poison in the same sense that dihydrogen monoxide is.
      - Skabb15
        
        wrong, but whatever helps you feel special
Greg Gallacci

The neglect of the parents killed this poor child.
This could have been any one of hundreds of potentially harmful household products.
Better packaging helps, but the real safe-guard for kids is their parents.
swen

The average household has multiple poisonous substances, dozens of toddlers have died from those detergent packs. This should have nothing to do with e – cig discussion and everything to do with child proofing around children.
WolfFan

Think of it as evolution in action.

1 The parents should have parked the bottle of whatever somewhere where the child could not get it. Period. Behind a locked door. inside a locked drawer. Somewhere where the child absolutely positively cannot get to it, same as any other hazardous materials. (Bleach. Insecticide. Detergents. Petroleum products. Small metal or plastic objects. Any and every thing else which might be a toxicity or a chocking hazard.) Yes, I know that it’s inconvenient, but I absolutely guarantee that toddlers _will_ get into something, anything, not securely locked away.

2 The parents should have taught the child that ‘do not touch’ means ‘do not touch’. Some things are not toys. Some things are not edible. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it will take time before the child works out that playing with/eating that that thing is a Very Bad Idea. Yes, it will take longer before the child works out that acting on Very Bad Ideas is detrimental to its health. (Some children never figure this out. I’m sure that all reading this can think of a few.) However, one of the duties of a parent is to at least try.

3 the manufacturer should have put a child-proof cap on the thing. They’re gonna get sued into oblivion ’cause they didn’t, and they deserve every bit of abuse they’re about to get.

4 the manufacturers should NOT have marketed the things in nice bright child-attractive colors. Doing that is gonna add a few zeros to the end of the jury award they get rocked with. And they’ll deserve _that_, too.

5 the government should have made damn sure that the parents were aware of points 1 and 2, and that the vendor was aware of points 3 and 4. Lefties will scream about government interference with parental rights. Righties will scream about governmental interference in business. Tough. One of the things government is _supposed_ to do is to safeguard the lives of the citizenry. All of the citizenry, including toddlers too young to work out that sticking random objects in their mouths is Not A Good Idea.

I suspect that the parents will have learned something from this. I’m certain that the vendor will have learned. I suspect that the government hasn’t learned a thing.

No-one looks good in this. No-one.
jerry mander

Thugs kill innocent toddlers everyday in drive by shootings, not a word is mentioned. Black lives matter but not to other blacks.
Penelope Davenport

Negligent parents killed and innocent toddler. Here come the laws restricting people’s rights because these parents allowed a toxic substance within their child’s reach.
David Spencer

The poisonous potential of highly concentrated nicotine is well established; in fact, it’s been known since the Middle Ages. If you leave a fresh cigarette to steep for 48 hours glass of water overnight and then drink the water in that glass, you *will* die. But so what? The vaping community has always bent over backwards to explain that highly concentrated -assuming 60/100mg/ml pre-mix solution- nicotine is hazardous when ingested in this manner. Put a childproof cap on it and slap it with a WARNING label.
- Nate
  
  “If you leave a fresh cigarette to steep for 48 hours glass of water
  overnight and then drink the water in that glass, you *will* die.”
  
  This is the most hilarious thing I’ve read in at least a week. So you’re saying that by steeping a cigarette in water, the 1mg of nicotine it contains is magically going to turn into 1000mg? Did you actually type this with a straight face?
- Skabb15
  
  Wow, what a fearmongering dumb@$$. Let me guess….you dont smoke, or better, you USED to smoke and now you think smokers ought to be shot? Am I close? Idiots like you dont realize just how much you hurt your side of the argument.
KWMerican

An innocent toddler versus a guilty toddler?

The facts are moving enough. Don’t need this emotional hook drivel. Poor reporting skills
Tralfaz Ogleflueger

Not enough clickbait using the first headline so you added innocent to it?
colinalcarz

No person of any age would knowingly drink a bottle of vape juice? What are you saying? The toddler did it unknowingly? Forcibly?
The quantities and concentrations of nicotine don’t amount to a lethal dose? Yet the toddler is dead.
Are you saying the cause of death given at the hospital was mistaken?
- Nate
  
  No official cause of death has been announced, and that’s not the hospital’s job anyway. That won’t happen until there’s been an autopsy and a full battery of toxicology tests.
  - colinalcarz
    
    My apologies, but then what was the basis for the article’s claim? The parents’ statement?