This could be a record year for venomous snake bites

WSBTV.com News Staff
·2 min read
4

With the weather warming up comes the growing risk of getting bitten by a venomous snake.

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Last week, the Georgia poison control center said four people were bitten, all of them hospitalized, including a two-year-old.

Channel 2′s Tom Regan was along the Peachtree Creek Greenway in DeKalb County where experts said this could be a record year for snake bites.

Just like the human population, the snake population in Georgia is growing. Each year, hundreds of people are bitten by venomous snakes. Though deaths are rare, it can be a very painful experience.

In Georiga, most venomous snake bites come from copperheads.

Within a week, four emergency calls came into the Georgia Poison Center about copperhead bites.

“One involved a two-year-old who was in their yard, playing and required anti-venom. So it was a pretty serious case,” Dr. Gaylord Lopez with the poison center said. “That required transfer to one of the local here children’s hospitals.”

About a quarter of venomous snake bites require anti-venom, which works by boosting our immune systems and breaking down toxins.

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The Georgia Poison Control Center has recorded two snake bite deaths in the last five years.

If you get bitten by a snake, here’s what you shouldn’t do.

“No putting ice on the site, no using a tourniquet, no using medication and alcohol,” Lopez said. “No sucking it out like in the old Western movies we used to see.”

Lopez said the first antidote for snake bites are car keys.

“Go to get evaluated,” Lopez said. “We’ll check out the wound. We’ll check out the symptoms.”

The Georgia Poison Control Center said they’ve gotten more than 2,500 snake bite calls in the last five years and this year, that number could climb above 3,000.

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