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According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, accidental poisoning was second only to car crashes as the leading cause of unintentional death in 2009. In fact, among people aged 25 to 64, accidental poisoning was an even larger death threat than car crashes were. This week is National Poison Prevention Week, which seeks to make that statistic a thing of the past. Doing so will require all of us to be more careful.

According to the McCook Daily Gazette, 87 people die from accidental poisoning each day in the United States - or a rate of one person dying every 17 minutes. In fact, 91 percent of people who died of an unintentional poisoning died after taking a drug, most commonly painkillers. People between the ages of 45 and 49 years old were most likely to die of accidental poisoning. Men were also more likely to die from such a cause than women. American Indians were most likely to die from such causes, followed by Caucasians and then African Americans.

However, it is not just adults who need to worry about accidental poisoning. According to a report by Safe Kids, 500,000 parents call a poison control center because of an object that their child ingested, while 67,000 children are taken to the emergency room each year for medical poisoning. The number of cases have grown by 30 percent in the past decade, USA Today reports, due to a rise in the number of prescription and over-the-counter medications in people's homes. Emergency room cases dropped slightly between 2010 and 2011, but not enough to be statistically significant.

Most often, in children's cases, they take medicine that belongs to an adult. Most of the time, though, they are not getting the medicine from a cabinet, but rather from the floor, purses, tables or pillboxes. Because the incident can be so quick, these cases can happen even when parents are ordinarily very careful.

As a parent, there are things that you can do to protect your child. Only six percent of children in these cases obtained medication in that way, so properly storing medication is a good bet. If you are visiting someone's house who does not typically have a need to put their medication away, you may need to ask that they store their medication out of reach from children's hands.

As an adult, understand what each medication is for by reading, comprehending and following label instructions. Only take medication that is prescribed for you, and throw out expired medications properly.