(From Science Daily) Parents are being urged not to use domestic spoons to give children medicine after a study found significant differences in capacity. A parent using one of the biggest domestic teaspoons would be giving their child 192 per cent more medicine than a parent using the smallest teaspoon and the difference was 100 per cent for the tablespoons. This increases the chance of a child receiving an overdose or indeed too little medication.

Medical experts have warned parents that using domestic spoons to dispense children’s medicine could lead to overdoses after discovering that some hold two to three times as much as others.

The study in the August issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice, looked at 71 teaspoons and 49 tablespoons collected from 25 households in Attica, Greece.

It found that the capacity of the teaspoons ranged from 2.5ml to 7.3ml, with an average and median volume of 4.4ml. The capacity of the tablespoons ranged from 6.7ml to 13.4ml, with an average of 10.4ml and a median of 10.3ml.

“The variations between the domestic spoon sizes was considerable and in some case bore no relation to the proper calibrated spoons included in many commercially available children’s medicines” says Professor Matthew E Falagas, Director of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Athens, Greece.

“A parent using one of the biggest domestic teaspoons would be giving their child 192 per cent more medicine than a parent using the smallest teaspoon and the difference was 100 per cent for the tablespoons. This increases the chance of a child receiving an overdose or indeed too little medication.”

Read more here: Using Spoons to give Children Medicine Increases Overdose Risk, Doctors Warn