Public awareness survey: the Maryland Poison Center and Mr. Yuk, 1981 and 1975.

A telephone survey of residents of metropolitan Baltimore was conducted in 1981 to assess awareness of the Maryland Poison Center and a program based on the Mr. Yuk poisoning warning symbol. The results of 280 telephone interviews are compared with a similar survey conducted 6 years earlier by the Maryland Poison Center. When faced with a harmful exposure, the most common response in the 1981 survey (32.9 percent) was to call the poison center. That response was only the fourth most frequent answer (14.5 percent) in the 1975 survey. Calling a physician or taking the person to a physician was the most frequent response in 1975 (29.5 percent) but only the fourth most frequent in 1981 (15.0 percent). Of the respondents who would call a poison center, 55.7 percent in the 1981 survey knew the center's telephone number or had ready access to it. Public awareness of Mr. Yuk remained at approximately 60 percent in both surveys. Persons familiar with the warning symbol in the latest survey were three times as likely to call the poison center as those who were not aware of it.