Ninety-nine per cent of accidental poisoning preventable, says study.
More than 300 New Zealanders have suffered chemical poisoning from unlabelled or mislabelled containers in the past decade.
Just over half of those poisoned were adults and a third were children under 5 years of age.
A study, published in today's New Zealand Medical Journal, used data from the National Poisons Centre in Dunedin between 2003 and 2013 to investigate incidents of poisoning following exposure to mislabelled or unlabelled chemical products.
Of the 324,411 calls made to the centre, 31 per cent related to chemical exposures and 0.75 per cent, or 757 cases, were exposures to products in unlabelled or non-original containers.
In three cases, including one involving a child, the symptoms were considered severe, in 38 cases, moderate and in 267, mild.
Dishwashing liquid, vehicle fuels, glycols, disinfectant and bleach were among the most common substances involved.
"Putting products in unlabelled containers is just a recipe for disaster," said Dr Leo Schep, a toxicologist at the poisons centre and one of the authors of the report.
"A lot of the people involved are adults ... adults just grab what is typically a juice or drink container, thinking it's the original content, swallow and realise by the taste it's not."
One of the examples cited in the study was 73-year-old Avondale woman Nola Murphy, who was rushed to hospital in 2012 after drinking a benzalkonium chloride-based moss and mould cleaner. It was served to her from a Sprite Zero bottle at the local RSA after a cleaner mistakenly left the bottle on the bar.
Mrs Murphy told the Herald at the time that she felt like her eyes were popping out of her head and felt extreme burning in her throat.
"I thought it was the end ... I didn't know if I'd had a stroke or what had happened The drink looked like lemonade, it was bubbling up like lemonade, it was a full bottle and I just put it in a glass and drank it."
Returned and Services Association national chief executive Stephen Clarke said at the time that the incident was very unfortunate and had prompted a review of practices at all RSA clubs.
In another incident, three people drank from a water jug containing alkaline beer line cleaner in 2009. All were sent to hospital, two with oesophageal burns.
The study noted severe poisoning had resulted in deaths overseas. A man died after consuming paraquat that was stored in a Lucozade bottle and a 2-year-old boy died after drinking diquat from a drink bottle. Authors of the report said poisoning exposures continue to occur in New Zealand despite laws prohibiting the storage of chemicals in food and beverage containers.
"The majority of poisonings, or 99 per cent, were accidental and would have been prevented if chemical storage regulations had been followed," it said.
Safekids Aotearoa director Ann Weaver said the number of children involved in poisoning cases was a concern and there was a need for tougher law enforcement.
She said people often bought products in bulk, because it was cheaper, and stored them in other containers.
She said even if the containers were labelled, young children were still at risk because they cannot read.
"What is concerning is that if children see a container that they recognise, like a milk bottle or a fizzy drink bottle, they associate it with what that container should have inside it," said Ms Weaver.