But it is also a medication that the National Poisons Centre gets the most calls about each year.
The Dunedin-based centre has just marked its 60th anniversary, and service delivery manager Lucy Shieffelbien said paracetamol overdoses had become common worldwide.
‘‘It's not just unique to us — paracetamol is our number one call.’’
Fortunately, staff were often able to help callers without them having to call an ambulance or rush off to the emergency department, but if a risk assessment found they had indeed overdosed, hospitals have a very effective antidote available.
On the more serious end of the scale was children drinking petrol, pesticides or herbicides, she said.
‘‘It's not that uncommon for people to store a bit of petrol for the lawnmower in an empty Coke bottle, for example.
‘‘And yes, you might write on it petrol, so you know there's petrol in there, but 3-year-olds can't read.
‘‘And actually, in New Zealand, you can be prosecuted for storing a chemical in a soda beverage container if a person is harmed.’’
She said there were still rare calls about people drinking ‘‘really nasty things’’ like paraquat — a highly toxic restricted-use pesticide.
‘‘Even though we only get called about it once every 10 years, you know that if you get a call about paraquat, it's not likely to have a very favourable outcome.
‘‘It's those kind of calls that really kind of put us on edge.
‘‘It's the more obscure things that you don't see very often, but are certainly very, very harmful and very dangerous.’’
She said staff were recently asked about their most unusual call about poisoning.
‘‘The team went, actually, at the time of the call, you'll go, ‘Well, that was weird’, or ‘That was interesting’ or ‘That was unusual’.
‘‘But then by the time they take the next call, all the calls kind of merge into one.
‘‘Nothing surprises us — not anymore.’’
She said the National Poisons Centre was established in Dunedin in December 1964, after University of Otago pharmacology and toxicology department head professor Garth McQueen visited the United States, where he noticed many poison centres were being established.
‘‘Bearing in mind, this is sort of post-World War 2, where new things were coming on the market, new consumer products, things like new cardiac drugs for hypertension.
‘‘The off-spin of all these new products coming about, was children were starting to be harmed.
‘‘So that's why these poison centres started to pop up.’’
At that time, the Ministry of Health provided microfiche with all the data they had on all the drugs that were available in New Zealand.
‘‘They got a lot of basic consumer product information — just things like how to deal with bleach poisoning.
‘‘A lot of work went into putting together what was called ‘the file’, and that was what was used to answer calls.
‘‘That file is now digitised and commercialised, and it's now sold into over 33 countries around the world.
‘‘It's a gold standard and used in a lot of poison centres around the world, which is quite an awesome accomplishment for something we do here.’’
She said the centre had a team of poisons information officers who answer calls 24 hours a day, about people who may have poisoned themselves.
And when they were not answering calls, they were busy updating information on the latest products and drug information.
On average, the centre takes 25,000 calls a year.
She said about 70% of the calls could be managed safely at home, rather than ‘‘choking up’’ hospital emergency departments.
Despite the 60th anniversary being a major milestone, she said there was no official celebration.
‘‘We marked it internally, but we carried on, business as usual.’’
