Report: Kids landing in ER after ingesting melatonin

(CNN) — The use of melatonin has soared to help people sleep, but you should keep it away from young children.

In fact, the CDC reports the number of children under five who went to the ER because of melatonin was up 420% between 2009 and 2020. Specifically, 11,000 children went to the emergency room between 2019 and 2022 due to ingesting melatonin unsupervised.

Childproof packaging is not required on the natural sleep aid. In most cases, the kids got into a bottle of melatonin gummies unsupervised.

Melatonin is considered generally safe for kids, but there is no scientific data on exact dosing. Also, dozens of melatonin gummy products have been found to contain dangerous levels of the hormone.

In some cases, they contained only CBD with no melatonin.

Most of the children who ingested melatonin did not have to be hospitalized.