Everyone's first instinct is to make the person vomit. It's almost always the wrong decision, and sometimes the fatal one.
ACT
- Move the person away from the source if they're still exposed. Fumes, gas, a spilled product. Protect yourself first: a poisoned rescuer makes two casualties.
- Check consciousness and breathing. If either is missing, everything else waits: see Unconscious person.
- Don't make them vomit. Not by triggering the reflex, not with salt, not with anything else.
- Don't give them anything to drink — no water, no milk, no oil — without advice from a poison control centre.
- Don't give charcoal on your own initiative.
- Identify the poison and keep the packaging. The exact product name, the estimated amount, the time of exposure, and the person's approximate weight. These four pieces of information are worth more than anything else you can do.
- Call a poison control centre or emergency services. That's the useful step. They have the precise instructions for each substance, and those differ completely from one to another.
- Watch them constantly, in the recovery position if their consciousness becomes impaired.
If it splashed onto the skin or into an eye: rinse with running water, for a long time, removing soaked clothing without pulling it over the head. Don't try to neutralise it — see Burns.
If it was inhaled: get into the open air, loosen anything tight, and sit them up if breathing is difficult.
ADAPT
It's a corrosive product — drain cleaner, descaler, caustic soda, strong acid. Making them vomit is catastrophic here: the product burns the oesophagus a second time on the way back up, and can be inhaled. Give nothing by mouth and call.
It's a foaming product — laundry detergent, washing-up liquid, shampoo. Foam coming back up can get into the lungs. Same rule: don't make them vomit.
It's a hydrocarbon — petrol, paraffin, white spirit, lamp oil. These are the most dangerous if inhaled: a few drops in the lungs cause serious damage. Never make them vomit, never siphon by mouth.
It's a medicine. How serious it is depends entirely on the drug and the dose. Some very ordinary tablets are deadly to children in small amounts, and several cause no symptoms for many hours before serious liver damage. No symptoms is not reassuring. Keep the box, count what's missing, and call.
It's carbon monoxide — several people with the same headache in the same place, who feel better outside. Get everyone out immediately, air the place, don't switch anything on. See La combustion et l’évacuation des fumées.
It's a mushroom or a plant. Keep a sample, including leftovers from cooking. How long the symptoms took to appear is crucial information: beyond six hours, the most serious poisonings become likely. See Décider si quelque chose est comestible and Les plantes toxiques.
You're very far from any help and have no phone. You have no antidote and no safe action. What remains: add nothing, watch consciousness and breathing, keep them warm, and write down the time and how things evolve. Then look for help: see Signaling and getting found.
UNDERSTAND
Why vomiting is no longer advised
It was the standard advice for decades. Toxicology societies abandoned it for well-established reasons.
It doesn't achieve much. Induced vomiting only removes a fraction of what was swallowed, and that fraction shrinks very quickly with time. After a few tens of minutes, most of it has already been absorbed.
The risk is real. What comes back up can go into the airways, causing lung damage that is often worse than the poisoning itself. With a corrosive product, it causes a second burn. With a foaming product or a hydrocarbon, it directly causes inhalation.
It delays what matters. Time spent making someone vomit is time not spent calling and watching.
The same logic applies to milk, long recommended: it neutralises nothing, speeds up the absorption of some substances, and fills a stomach that may have to be emptied in hospital.
What really matters
The outcome depends on the substance, the dose and the time elapsed. Those three pieces of information guide the whole treatment, and you're the only one who can provide them. Finding the packaging beats any action.
Some poisonings have specific antidotes, given in hospital. Others don't. Either way, the decision belongs to a service with up-to-date documentation for every product — and that's exactly what a poison control centre gives you in a few minutes over the phone.
The delay trap
Many serious poisonings are silent at first. Some very common drugs cause no signs for hours, while damage is already under way. Someone who's fine two hours later isn't out of danger, and that's why you call even when there are no symptoms.