Does hydrogen peroxide induce vomiting in humans?

Factual Questions
1

My 15-lb dog ate about 5 oz. of milk chocolate yesterday evening. We called the on-call vet with 30 minutes of ingestion. The vet-on-call suggested that since we had caught the dog so soon after eating, we should make the dog swallow about a teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide. The vet said he’d throw up the chocolate in short order, and we wouldn’t have to bring our dog in for a visit.

Well, the vet was right on – our Bichon heaved up virtually ALL the chocolate within two minutes of taking the hydrogen peroxide. Better yet, he was back to his old frisky self, as if nothing had ever happened.

My question: wouldn’t this work on people, too? Any reason to have Ipecac in the medicine cabinet when hydrogen peroxide will do the trick?

2

I don’t know about the 3% hydrogen peroxide but the 40% stuff some health fanatics used to keep around for some weird reasons will kill you if you it undiluted. You wind up with oxygen coming out of solution in your bloodstream and instant strokes.

Maybe ipecac won’t make dogs vomit. They evidently have different ideas of what is sickening, since I have never seen a human eat what he has just puked up, let alone keeping it down the second time around.

Chava

3

From: About :: Dogs

4

As posted by Whack-a-Mole, ipecac works just fine. However, most folks don’t happen to have it kicking around in the medicine cabinet. A goodly percentage do have peroxide, which is why vets automatically skip to that treatment.

Also, I used to have to gargle with peroxide, and accidentally swallowed some after being startled. Trust me, it’ll make humans barf, too.

5

Yes it can.
From the Material safety data sheet (MSDS )for H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub]

Here’s the gory details of death by Hydrogen peroxide.
More on pets and H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub].