Medicines Are Leading Cause of Poison Death

Posted: Mar 28, 2011 11:23 AM
Updated: Mar 31, 2011 3:43 PM

Medications remain the leading cause of poisoning deaths, with most poisoning fatalities occurring among adults, according to a report by the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

Based on data from 2009 calls to U.S. poison centers, fthe report found that sedatives/hynotics/ antipsychotics; cardiovascular drugs, opioids and acetaminophen combinations were most frequently associated with poison-related deaths.

In all, poison centers reported 1,158 poison-related fatalities in 2009. Most fatalities occurred in people between the ages of 20 and 59.

In all, U.S. poison centers took more than 4.2 million calls in 2009, treating more than 2.4 million poison exposures and answering more than 1.6 million questions about poisons.

Children younger than 6 were involved in the majority of all poison exposures reported to poison centers in 2009, but accounted for just 1.8 percent of poison-related fatalities that year.

More than 91 percent of all poison exposures occurred in a residence. Most patients were treated at home. More than 72 percent of calls from the general public were managed at home, meaning patients avoided costly emergency care.

Among other findings in the report:

The top five substance classes most frequently involved in all human exposures were analgesics (11.7 percent); cosmetics/personal care products (7.7 percent); household cleaning substances (7.4 percent); sedatives/hypnotics/antipsychotics (5.8 percent); foreign bodies/toys/miscellaneous (4.3 percent).
While 91.19 percent of all poison exposures occurred in the home, poison exposures also occurred in the workplace (1.51 percent); in school (1.26 percent) and in restaurants or food service establishments (.24 percent).

The report is based on information from the National Poison Data System (NPDS), which tracks every call made to a U.S. poison center in near real-time, serving as a national resource to collect and monitor U.S. poison exposure and serving as one of the few real-time national surveillance systems in place to track health trends. The full report is available online at www.aapcc.org.

If you have other poisoning concerns or question call the toll-free national hotline at 1-800-222-1222 to reach your local poison center. If you live in Arizona outside of Maricopa County, this number will get you to our experts at the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center in Tucson. Check out our website for more information.