Abstract
Background: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is the leading cause of poisoning death worldwide, but associations between CO poisoning and weather remain unclear.Objective: To quantify the influence of climate parameters (e.g., temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed) on the incidence risk of acute CO poisoning in Taiwan.Methods: We used negative binomial mixed models (NBMMs) to evaluate the influence of weather parameters on the incidence risk of acute CO poisoning. Subgroup analyses were conducted, based on the seasonality and the intentionality of acute CO poisoning cases.Results: We identified a total of 622 patients (mean age: 32.9 years old; female: 51%) with acute CO poisoning in the study hospital. Carbon monoxide poisoning was associated with temperature (beta: −0.0973, rate ratio (RR): 0.9073, p < 0.0001) but not with relative humidity (beta: 0.1290, RR: 1.1377, p = 0.0513) or wind speed (beta: −0.4195, RR: 0.6574, p = 0.0806). In the subgroup analyses, temperature was associated with the incidence of intentional CO poisoning (beta: 0.1076, RR: 1.1136, p = 0.0333) in spring and unintentional CO poisoning (beta: −0.1865, RR: 0.8299, p = 0.0184) in winter.Conclusion: Changes in temperature affect the incidence risk for acute CO poisoning, but the impact varies with different seasons and intentionality in Taiwan. Our findings quantify the effects of climate factors and provide fundamental evidence for healthcare providers to develop preventative strategies to reduce acute CO poisoning events.
Highlights
Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is a global issue of great significance for public health and societal costs [1,2,3,4]
During the period 2010–2015, we initially identified a total of 660 acute CO poisoning cases in the emergency settings in the study hospital
The greatest differences between the intentional and the nonintentional CO poisoning groups were found in the source of CO poisoning and the history of psychiatric diseases (42.6 vs. 1.6%, p < 0.05)
Summary
Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is a global issue of great significance for public health and societal costs [1,2,3,4]. According to worldwide epidemiological data, in 2017 the cumulative incidence and mortality rates of CO poisoning were about 137 cases and 4.6 deaths per one million person-years, respectively. Over the past 25 years, the worldwide incidence has remained stable, but the mortality rate has declined by 40% due to continued public health education and the improvement of treatment [5, 6]. According to statistics from Taiwan’s government, and contrary to the global trend, the mortality rate of unintentional poisoning continued to increase from 1.6 to 3.5 per million person-years during the period of 1997–2003 in Taiwan [7, 8], which was mostly related to old piping and improper use of heating systems. Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is the leading cause of poisoning death worldwide, but associations between CO poisoning and weather remain unclear
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