The media's influence on a poison center's call volume.

Although erratic at times, a poison center's (PC) call volume is generally predictable, but an emergent increase in call volume from an alarmed public can rapidly overwhelm existing personnel making it difficult to manage true emergencies. This is illustrated by a product recall concerning food allegedly contaminated with asbestos occurring in January 1998. Utilizing an on-line database, all calls over a 5-d period concerning this recall were reviewed and tabulated by both the date and time received. Corporate communications polled the print, radio and TV media to determine when the product recall stories were presented. This information was compared to and correlated with the Regional Poison Information Center (RPIC) call volume. Over a 5-d period the RPIC responded to 487 calls regarding the recall with 86.2% received in the first 33 h after the initial broadcast. During this 33-h period a total of 797 calls were documented at the RPIC indicating 52.7% of the call volume being related to the recall. Over the same period 4 local TV and radio stations broadcast the story 33 times with 1 station airing it 19 times in a 24-h period. Two newspaper stories were published. The public has a right to be alerted to potential health hazards, but a sudden increase in calls to a PC can be crippling. Based on this and similar experiences our PC developed a strategy, in concert with corporate communications, to respond to future incidents with the goal of reducing the adverse impact on PC call volume through the promotion of balanced and responsible information.