Health committee  —might die before reaching the hospital. There would be no possibility for me to clean his gastrointestinal tract. Supportive treatment is the same. We have no known good antidotes for nicotine. That's a cause for concern.

Health committee  I'm going to make a very short comment on that. The potential toxicity, acute toxicity, of nicotine versus the toxicity of propylene glycol is completely different. What we're concerned about right now is the nicotine sulphate. I'm not saying that it's impossible for young pe

Health committee  Yes. Clearly it's just a matter of time. Most medical toxicologists were not in practice in the years when nicotine sulphate was actually used as an insecticide, but the older medical toxicology literature has many case reports of children dying after exposures to liquid nicoti

Health committee  My point of view is very particular on this subject. Being a medical toxicologist—and Canadian poison centres are handling acute exposures—what I am concerned about is the potential for liquid nicotine to cause harm, especially in children, because children under six years of age

Health committee  In children, exposure to liquid nicotine is very, very dangerous. Exposure to only five millilitres of concentrated liquid nicotine preparation can actually bring a child to the hospital very, very sick.

Health committee  I'll use this occasion to answer your question about the danger of nicotine. In toxicology there is a principle that says it's the dose that makes the poison. Everything is poisonous; it's the dose that will actually do it. You have to make a difference between chronic exposure

Health committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. I would like to introduce myself. I am an emergency physician and a medical toxicologist. I am a consultant at the Quebec Poison Control Centre. I'm also an assistant professor of medicine at McGill Universi