An estimated 7,000 children ages 11 and younger are treated in hospital emergency rooms each year because they have ingested cough and cold medications, sometimes without their parents’ knowledge, according to an article published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics. Two-thirds of those visits involved children between the ages of 2 and 5 years, and 80 percent of the events for this age group were from unsupervised ingestions. Most of the children did not require hospital admission, but one-fourth needed additional treatment to eliminate the medicine from their bodies. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted today that cold and cough medications marketed to infants and toddlers under the age of 2 have recently been withdrawn from sale, and the CDC is currently reviewing the safety of such medications for children between 2 and 11 years old. The cough and cold medications examined in the Pediatrics study included decongestants (for unclogging a stuffy nose), expectorants (for lossening mucus so that it can be coughed up), antitussives (for quieting coughs), and histamines (for sneezing and runny nose).