Accidental poisoning

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Accidental poisoning is caused by exposure to a substance in an amount that harms the body. It is the 9^th most common reason for injury hospitalisation and leads to thousands of hospitalisations and more than a thousand deaths in Australia each year.

Accidental poisoning mostly involves pharmaceutical drugs. In this report, the term ‘pharmaceutical drugs’ includes those prescribed by a health practitioner and those obtained by other means.

Accidental poisoning resulted in around:

This represents 1.6% of injury hospitalisations and 9.8% of injury deaths.

Intentional poisoning injuries are included under Self-harm and suicide and Assault and homicide. The adverse effects of correctly prescribed and consumed drugs are not included in this report.

Substances involved in accidental poisoning hospitalisations

In 2021–22:

• harmful exposure to pharmaceutical drugs made up 80% of accidental poisoning hospitalisations (Table 1)
• harmful exposure to other substances, including alcohol, organic solvents and gases, made up the other 20% of accidental poisoning hospitalisations (Table 2).

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables B7–8.

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Organic solvents and halogenated hydrocarbons and their vapours include aerosol and solvent-based products such as, deodorant, hair care products, laughing gas (nitrous oxide), paint, paint thinner, glue, nail polish remover, cleaning spray, felt-tip markers, mineral turpentine, methylated spirits, and petrol.
4. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables B7–8.

Substances involved in accidental poisoning deaths

In 2020–21:

• harmful exposure to pharmaceutical drugs made up 85% of accidental poisoning hospitalisations
• alcohol was the most common non-pharmaceutical cause of accidental poisoning hospitalisations (Table 3).

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10 external cause codes (WHO 2011).

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables E10–11.

Trends over time

Over the period from 2017–18 to 2021–22, the age-standardised rate of hospitalisations due to poisoning declined by an annual average of 5.7%. From 2012–13 to 2016–17, there was an average annual increase of 3.4%.

There is a break in the time series for hospitalisations between 2016–17 and 2017–18 due to a change in data collection methods (see the technical notes for details).

For deaths due to poisoning, the age-standardised rate for 2020–21 was 17% lower than a year earlier. Between 2011–12 and 2020–21 the rate rose and fell back to the same level. (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Accidental poisoning hospitalisations and deaths, by sex, by year

For more detail, see Data tables C1–3 and F1–4.

Seasonal differences

Hospitalisations due to accidental poisoning remain relatively consistent across seasons (Figure 2).

Some other types of injury show a seasonal pattern – see the interactive display.

Figure 2: Seasonal differences in accidental poisoning hospitalisations, 2019–20 to 2021–22

Notes

1. Admission counts have been standardised into two 15-day periods per month.
2. A scale up factor has been applied to June admissions to account for cases not yet separated.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables C1–3 and F1–4.

Age and sex differences

Accidental poisoning hospitalisation rates were slightly higher for males than females (in 2021–22), while the rate of death for males was more than twice the rate for females (in 2020–21).

Age patterns were very different between hospitalisations and deaths (Figure 3).

For accidental poisoning hospitalisations in 2021–22:

• males made up a greater proportion (53%) than females
• when comparing life-stage age groups, children aged 0–4 had the highest rate of hospitalisation (85 per 100,000 population). Further breakdown of the 65-and-over age group reveals that those aged 85 and over have similarly high rates.

For accidental poisoning deaths in 2020–21:

• males made up a greater proportion (69%) than females

• people aged 25–44 and 45–64 had much higher rates than other age groups (7.8 and 9.7 per 100,000 population, respectively).

Figure 3: Accidental poisoning hospitalisations and deaths, by age group and sex

For more detail, see Data tables A1–3 and D1–3.

Severity

There are many ways that the severity, or seriousness, of an injury can be measured. Some of the ways to measure the severity of hospitalised injuries are:

• number of days in hospital
• time in an intensive care unit (ICU)
• time on a ventilator
• in-hospital deaths.

The average number of days in hospital, and the rate of in-hospital deaths for accidental poisoning were lower than the average for all injury hospitalisations, but the percentage of cases that included either time in an ICU or on continuous ventilatory support were higher (Table 4).

Note: Average number of days in hospital (length of stay) includes admissions that are transfers from 1 hospital to another or transfers from 1 admitted care type to another within the same hospital, except where care involves rehabilitation procedures.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A12–13.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

• there were 794 hospitalisations in 2021–22 due to accidental poisoning (Table 5)
• the hospitalisation rate for males was 1.1 times as high as for females
• hospitalisation rates were highest for children aged 0–4
• there were 77 deaths due to accidental poisoning in 2020–21 (Table 6)
• the rate of death for males was 1.3 times as high as for females

Note: Persons includes cases where sex is intersex, indeterminate or missing.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Deaths data only includes data for New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A4–5 and D4-5.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians, compared with non-Indigenous Australians, after adjusting for differences in population age structure, were:

• 3.1 times as likely to be hospitalised due to accidental poisoning in 2021–22 (Table 7)
• 3.0 times as likely to die because of accidental poisoning in 2020–21 (Table 8).

Notes

1. Rates are age-standardised to the 2001 Australian population (per 100,000).
2. ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes

1. Rates are age-standardised to the 2001 Australian population (per 100,000).
2. ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.
3. Deaths data only includes data for New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A6 and D8.

The rate of hospitalisation for accidental poisoning was highest among the 0–4 life-stage age group for both Indigenous and other Australians (Figure 4).

Deaths data are not presented here because of small numbers.

Figure 4: Accidental poisoning hospitalisations by Indigenous status, by age group and sex, 2021–22

For more detail, see Data tables A4–A6 and D4–D8.

Remoteness

In 2021–22, people living in Very remote areas had the highest rate of hospitalisation for accidental poisoning and people living in Major cities  had the lowest rate. People living in Very remote areas, using age-standardised rates, were 1.5 times as likely to be hospitalised for poisoning as those living in Major cities (Table 9).

People living in Outer regional areas had higher rates of death by accidental poisoning than those in other areas in 2020–21 (Table 10).

Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.
Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

n.p. not published because of small numbers, confidentiality, or other concerns about the quality of the data.
Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.
Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A9 and D9.

The highest rate of hospitalisation for accidental poisoning was among the 0–4 life-stage age group living in Very remote areas of Australia. (Figure 5).

Deaths data are not presented because of small numbers.

Figure 5: Accidental poisoning hospitalisations by remoteness, by age group and sex, 2021–22

For more detail, see Data tables A7–A9 and D9–10.

For information on how statistics are calculated by remoteness, see the technical notes.

Data details

Technical notes: how the data were calculated

Data tables: download the full tables

Glossary

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