• Most of poison exposures (79%) were unintentional.  The Center also received calls about other types of poisonings: medication side effects, substance abuse, malicious poisonings, and suicide attempts. 
• 16,585 people (27.4%) called for poison-related information. Their questions were about possible problems with medication interactions, pesticide use, workplace chemicals, the safety of specific medications while breast-feeding, and many more topics.
• Half of poison exposures involved children younger than six, but the most serious cases occurred in adolescents and adults.
• 53% of poison exposures involved medications; other exposures were to household or automotive products, plants, mushrooms, pesticides, animal bites and stings.

• 78% of poison exposures involved people who swallowed a drug or poison. People were also poisoned by inhalation and through exposures to the skin or eyes.
• 72% of poison exposures were managed over the phone and did not need medical treatment in a health care facility.

Ten Most Common Poison Exposures for
Young Children and Adults
National Capital Poison Center, 2008

Call Type by Location
National Capital Poison Center, 2008

Poisonings: The National Picture

According to the most recent data available from the CDC, poisoning was a leading cause of injury death in 2005, second only to motor vehicle crashes¹.  Seventy percent of these poisoning deaths were unintentional.  There were 32,691 poisoning deaths in 2005 and the rate has been rising for the past several years¹.  Most of this increase is attributable to the rising number of poisoning deaths involving opioid pain medications; over 90% of poisoning deaths in 2005 were drug related².

The National Capital Poison Center is one of 61 regional poison centers that serve the US.  Poison centers handle more than 2 million poison exposures each year, but the problem is even larger than that.   Many poisonings do not involve a call to the poison center.  Poison centers were consulted in just 4% of the 32,691 poisoning deaths in 2005^1,4.  The CDC estimated that there were 880,264 poisoning injuries in 2007 that were serious enough to result in a visit to an emergency department³.  That same year, poison centers were involved in 588,262 cases that involved treatment at a health care facility, indicating that poison centers are not consulted for many poisoning-related ED visits⁵.  Poisonings also go unreported when people do not realize they have been exposed, choose not to seek medical treatment or advice, do not have access to medical care, or do not know about poison center services. 

References

1. Fingerhut LA and Anderson RN. The three leading causes of injury mortality in the United States, 1999-2005. National Center for Health Statistics Health E-Stats, March 2008. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/injury99-05/injury99-05.htm.  Accessed 2/27/09. 
2. Fingerhunt LA. Increases in poisoning and methadone-related deaths: United States, 1995-2005.  National Center for Health Statistics E-Stas, February 2008.  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/poisoning/poisoning.htm.  Accessed 2/27/09.