Experts agree that the risks from kids’ cold and cough medicines are low, especially considering how common they are. Millions of children take kids’ cold medicines every year. One study from 1994 showed that in a single 30-day span, more than a third of all U.S. children under 6 were taking a cold or cough medicine.
Still, about 7,000 children under age 11 go to emergency rooms each year after taking cough and cold medicines, according to the CDC. Roughly two-thirds of those ER visits occurred after children drank cough or cold medicine while unsupervised.
While the overall risks are low, some experts say that they are not low enough. Given that there’s no evidence that kids’ cold medicines help children, some consider any risk -- no matter how slight -- to be unacceptably high.
Many cases of dangerous side effects resulted from overdoses. But accidentally giving a child a dose that’s too high can be easy to do. Parents might use two different brands of kids’ cold medicines at once, not realizing that both contain the same ingredients. Or they might just measure out the dose incorrectly, especially when they’re groggy in the middle of the night, trying to soothe a sick child.
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