A dangerous teaspoon of medicine

Many recipes call for a "teaspoon" of this or that. But most domestic teaspoons do not hold the same amount of liquid. This might be fine if you are following Jamie Oliver's latest creation, but could be very dangerous if you are trying to give a child the correct dose of medicine.

Scientists from Greece measured the capacity of a range of teaspoons and tablespoons collected from people's houses. They found that teaspoons ranged from 2.5ml to 7.3ml, and tablespoons from 6.7ml and 13.4ml. The average teaspoon held 4.4ml and the average tablespoon 10.3ml.

This means that a parent using a teaspoon from the drawer could be giving their child as much as 192 per cent more than the required dose.

Just as worryingly, many children would receive too little medicine if it was administered with a household utensil.

"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" said study leader Professor Matthew E Falagas, Director of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Athens, Greece.

The 25 women who took part in the study were aged between 24 and 84, and most had between one and three different teaspoons and tablespoons in their house, but two women had as many as six different teaspoons and one of those also had five different tablespoons.

"We not only found wide variations between households, we also found considerable differences within households" said Professor Falagas.

Using a calibrated spoon as is typically provided with commercial medicines produced better results, but there were still cases of underdosing.

The scientists are therefore urging parents to use properly marked medical syringes to give their children accurate doses of medicine. This method is also more effective if children are very young or reluctant to take medicine, as a spoon can be pushed away and spilt, leaving the parent unsure about how much the child has actually taken.

"Dosing and administering medication to children is different from adults," said Professor Falagas. "They need to be adjusted to age and body weight and, as a result, children are considered to be more vulnerable to dosage errors than adults."

"Our research clearly shows that using domestic teaspoons and tablespoons can result in children receiving considerably more or less medicine than they need."

For adults it should be sufficient to use calibrated spoons, but they should also avoid using domestic spoons if possible.

The study is published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

This article was published on Thu 15 July 2010