Is there a practical antidote to this or at least something that could forestall death until you could reach a hospital or vet? I saw one reference said atropine is used and I have seen at least one vet advise to keep syringes and a vial of atropine handy if you own dogs, what about a child though?
(For context in the country I live in they sell Lannate powder OTC by weight in agricultural supply stores, and it has no bitter flavoring and I am told tastes like table salt and also looks like it. The effects are well known and it is used to kill dogs and even humans. I saw someone’s dogs die after consuming a piece of raw chicken coated thickly in the powder that was thrown into their yard, from the first sign of symptoms(spasms that turned into flopping like a fish) to death was less than five minutes. We live on top of a mountain and before the dogs could even be put into a car they were dead, its also almost impossible to get an ambulance and the closest hospital is around ten minutes by car assuming the roads are clear.)
If this stuff is so concentrated that the time from initial symptoms to death is 5 minutes, nobody aside from a trained medical professional is going to do anything with atropine.
Atropine is an antogonist for anticholinesterase insecticides, but it is a poison in its own right. It’s great for temporarily delaying/alleviating the symptoms of poisoning, but it isn’t an antidote. It can assist in keeping the patient alive until body excretes the toxin, but for atropine to work on such a concentrated dose you’d need to administer atropine via continuous injections or IV drip, continuously adjusting the dosage according to the symptoms. Not something that is easily learned. If you just tried to inject enough atropine to counteract the symptoms you would either undershoot and the patient would die anyway, or you’d overshoot and kill the patient.
Atropine would probably be better than nothing, but it against such a concentrated dose, not very much better.
To have any real hope of a remote area treatment of such a massive dose you really need some sort of oxime treatment kit, but the only places you can get those are the military and hospitals, and neither is likely to sell to the public. Maybe if you bribe your vet, she might sell you one.
The other thing that you really, really need is some ipecac or other emetic. That way you can induce vomiting and at least prevent further absorption.
This really sucks, but where I am right now people use fluoroacetate as the dog bait of choice, and it has no antidote whatsoever. The simple fact is that the you are far better off voiding baiting than trying to treat it after the fact. Minimise the animal’s access to baits. Fence off the road access of the house, allow the dogs access to the house itself only via the back yard. That way the dog can only be poisoned by people actually walking across your property, not from the main road. Do not allow your animal to become a nuisance through barking or chasing people or livestock, that is almost guaranteed to end in bating attempt.
Beyond that there isn’t much that you can do unfortunately.
Just a note – a good way to induce vomiting in dogs is with a spoonful of over-the-counter hydrogen peroxide solution. If vomiting doesn’t start in a few moments you can follow up with a second spoonful.
I saw that recommended on a dog site and it worked very well for one of my girls the one time we needed it (although I did have to administer the second spoonful).
This can be dangerous in the case of poisoning. If the animal passes out before the peroxide takes effect, it can easily aspirate its own vomit and die even if it would have made a full recovery from the poison.
Ipecac also carries that risk, but because it is fast acting and always single dose, the risk is much less.
grude, where the heck are you that people can just buy this stuff? What do they use it on? I hope not crops for food… Makes me want to go totally organic more and more.
As to using atropine, what was mentioned above is all correct. I’m popping in to add that not only is an atropine injection not going to work if this stuff kills in 5 minutes, the only way it would have a remote possibility of working would be in a hospital environment and only if the victim already had a patent IV catheter instilled before ingestion. If the first/main symptom is seizures, it can be nigh impossible to get a good vein stick on a seizing patient, and an injection by any other route will not work fast enough.
Are you only concerned that strangers will throw bait for your dogs, and that your child or other people may come in contact with it? Or do you have this stored on your property somewhere? Locked up with a padlock, I hope? It’s terrifying just thinking about what people would do with that stuff in the US. Can people get such lethal to humans/pets insecticides in the US? Just truck down to Farm & Fleet and load up? Maybe I don’t want to know.