Epidemiology of Pediatric Poison Exposures: An Analysis of 2003 Poison Control Center Data

Persons 19 years and younger were implicated in more than 1.5 million poison exposures reported to US poison centers in 2003. Peak poison exposure incidence occurred in 1- and 2-year-olds, and children younger than 4 years comprised 46% of reported cases. Outcome worsened with age, with 8.6 cases per thousand exposures having moderate, major, or fatal outcomes in children younger than 6 years compared with 115.3 cases per thousand exposures in teens. Only 10% of poison exposures in children younger than 6 years are managed in health care facilities; thus, calls to poison centers can potentially prevent large numbers of unnecessary emergency department visits. Poison center data have been used to identify product hazards and protect the public through repackaging, reformulation, relabeling, and banning. Recently implemented near real-time submission of poison center data nationally has enabled continuous data mining, generating alerts when outliers are identified that suggest a possible chemical/bioterrorism incident, an emerging public health problem, a new pattern of substance abuse, an unrecognized product hazard, or contamination of food or water.

Keywords: poison exposures, poison centers, product hazard, poisoning epidemiology, toxic surveillance