More People Overdosing

More and more Americans are ending up in the ER from overdoses. But what they're overdosing on may surprise you.

It's not the street drugs you might think about, or even household chemicals, but medicines that come from people's medicine cabinets that is getting them into trouble.

According to a just released report, more Americans are landing in the hospital because of overdoses from prescription painkillers, sedatives and even tranquilizers. And surprisingly, the ones most at risk are city living middle aged women.

This study found between 1999 and 2006, hospital admissions due to poisonings by these medications increased 65 percent. That number is about twice the increase from overdosing on all other drugs or medicinal substances.

According to the authors of this report, unintentional poisoning is now the second leading cause of unintentional injury death in the US. Among 35 to 54 year olds, it even surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of unintentional injury death in 2005.

Experts can't site any single cause for this increase but do say part of the problem stems from an increase in how available these prescription medicines are today. To try and help reduce the numbers of overdoses, they are hoping doctors start to rethink the types and numbers of medicines they are prescribing and they fell the public needs to better understand the dangers associated with them .