Most people think of poisoning as a childhood issue. That is true for poisoning exposures, but not for nonfatal and fatal poisonings. The column charts below show the distribution of poisoning exposures, nonfatal poisonings, and fatal poisonings by age group. The poisoning exposure data are provided by the American Association of Poison Control Centers and represent the calls received by poison control centers. The nonfatal data represent emergency department visits, while the fatality data are compiled from death certificates.

Forty-one percent of nonfatal exposures occur among young children, largely from ingesting personal care products like cosmetics or household cleaning products. Fatal and nonfatal poisonings overwhelmingly occur among adults, which is largely attributed to the opioid epidemic in the United States. While 41% of poisoning exposures involve children 5 or younger, 92% of nonfatal poisonings and 98% of fatalities are adults older than 19.

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Nonfatal poisonings decreased 3.5% in 2021 but still account for more than 1.7 million emergency department visits per year. Fatal poisonings and poisoning death rates both increased more than 15% in 2021. This increase is largely attributed to opioid overdose deaths (see the drug overdose page for more details).

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Source: Fatal and nonfatal data – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, WONDER
Poisoning exposures – Gummin, D.D. et al.  (2022). 2021 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 39th Annual Report, Clinical Toxicology.

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