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 any other means.

Accidental poisoning resulted in around:

This represents 1.9% of injury hospitalisations and 11% 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 2020–21:

• harmful exposure to pharmaceutical drugs made up 81% of accidental poisoning hospitalisations (Table 1)
• harmful exposure to other substances, including alcohol, organic solvents and gases, made up the other 19% 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 2019–20:

• 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.

Seasonal differences

Hospital admissions due to accidental poisoning do not show a strong seasonal pattern, remaining relatively steady throughout the year.

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

Figure 1: Seasonal differences in accidental poisoning hospitalisations, 2018–19 to 2020–21

Notes

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Trends over time

The age-standardised rate of hospitalisations due to poisoning in 2020–21 was 1.9% lower than a year earlier.

Over the period from 2011–12 to 2016–17, there was an average annual increase of 2.3% for the age-standardised rate of hospitalisation for accidental poisoning. 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 2019–20 was 1.5% lower than a year earlier. The average annual increase in the rate between 2010–11 and 2019–20 was 1.1% (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Accidental poisoning hospitalisations and deaths, by sex, by year

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.

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

Age and sex differences

Accidental poisoning hospitalisation rates were similar for males and females (in 2020–21), but the rate of death for males was more than twice the rate for females (in 2019–20). Age patterns were also very different between hospitalisations and deaths (Figure 3).

For accidental poisoning hospitalisations in 2020–21:

• males made up a greater proportion (53%) than females
• when comparing life-stage age groups, young children aged 0–4 had the highest rate of accidental poisoning hospitalisation (95 per 100,000 population). Further breakdown of the 65-and-over age group reveals that those aged 85 and over had the highest rate of all (113 per 100,000).

For accidental poisoning deaths in 2019–20:

• males made up a greater proportion (70%) than females

• people aged 25–44 and 45–64 had much higher rates than other age groups (9.3 and 10.1 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 A13–15.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

• there were 899 hospitalisations in 2020–21 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 93 deaths due to accidental poisoning in 2019–20 (Table 6)
• the rate of death for males was 1.4 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:

• 2.9 times as likely to be hospitalised due to accidental poisoning in 2020–21 (Table 7)
• 2.9 times as likely to die because of accidental poisoning in 2019–20 (Table 8).

Notes

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

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes

• Rates are age-standardised to the 2001 Australian population (per 100,000).
• ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.
• 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, 2020–21

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

Remoteness

In 2020–21, 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 1.6 times as likely to be hospitalised for poisoning as those living in Major cities (Table 9).

People living in Inner regional areas had higher rates of death by accidental poisoning than those in Major cities or Outer regional areas in 2019–20 (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, 2020–21

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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