Jeanmarie Perrone MD, an emergency physician and medical toxicologist, answers questions from a reporter about the death of a 10-year- old boy in Miami and the dangers of fentanyl exposure. Hers is a voice of reason in an understandable climate of hysteria.
Miami Boy's Death Shows Powerful Opioid's Chilling Potential
The case is tragic. A 10-year-old boy walking home from the pool somehow encounters fentanyl and on arrival at home, vomits, collapses and dies, and later tests positive for fentanyl and heroin.
Miami chief: no leads, suspects in young boy's opioid death
Who knows what the final details of the case will be, but the facts of fentanyl exposure remain the same. Dermal contact is highly unlikely to cause an overdose. Injection, inhalation or ingestion are the areas of concern.
CDC: Protecting Workers at Risk
The boy did live in a neighborhood known as “ground zero” of the area’s opioid epidemic. Could he have found heroin/fentanyl on his way home, and either touched the whitish powder (heroin is often cut with sugar or baby formula), and then conveyed it to his nasal membranes or eaten it?
I don’t know how heroin is packaged in Miami, but here is how it comes in Hartford.
Teach your children well.
