FOI Ref: FOI/2023/4808
You asked
I would like to request information regarding the number of deaths related to the toxic effects of carbon monoxide (ICD-10 code T58) between the years 2001 and 2005. I was able to obtain the numbers from 2006 to 2021 but I was hoping to include 20 years' worth of figures.
I am happy to receive access to data relating to all deaths and search myself for the deaths relating to CO poisoning much like I did for the years 2006 to 2021 on your website.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The medical certificate of cause of death has two parts, Part 1 contains the sequence of health conditions or events leading directly to death, while Part 2 can contain other health conditions that contributed to the death but were not part of the direct sequence. If the patient had other health conditions at the time, but they did not influence the fact that the person died at that time, those health conditions are not included on the death certificate.
Deaths where the underlying cause is assigned to an external cause are also assigned at least one nature of injury code (Chapter XIX) or a post-procedural code not within Chapter XIX. This means it is possible to have more than one nature of injury code for a single death. However, it is necessary to select which one of the nature of injury codes is to be identified as the one causing death. This one cause code is referred to by ONS as the secondary cause. More information is available in section 9.2 of the user guide to mortality statistics.
Deaths from toxic effects of carbon monoxide would be given a nature of injury code of T58, which is a secondary cause of death.
We hold deaths involving carbon monoxide poisoning (T58) in the secondary causes section of our Death Registered series. This publication provides information from 2006 onwards.
Deaths involving this cause prior to 2006 can be created as a custom output from 2001 onwards. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). If you would like to discuss the provision of this analysis, please contact our Health Analysis and Pandemic Insights (HAPI) team at health.data@ons.gov.uk.
In case it is of interest, we also hold ad-hoc analysis published on our website for 2011 to 2017 showing the total number of deaths where toxic effects of carbon monoxide were mentioned on the death certificate. This can be accessed via the following link: Number of deaths where Carbon Monoxide was mentioned on the death certificate in England & Wales 2011 and 2017.