Department of Emergency Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Harvard Medical Toxicology Fellowship, Boston, MA, USA.
Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2021 Apr;59(4):320-325. doi: 10.1080/15563650.2020.1811297. Epub 2020 Sep 9.
Calls to poison control about exposure to household cleaners have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. This dynamic may reflect increased exposure from public health efforts as well as health misinformation shared on social media.
We analyzed the dynamics of calls to the Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island (MARI PCC) and tweets discussing treating COVID-19 with house cleaners from January 20, 2020 to May 5, 2020. We obtained publicly available tweets discussing the use of household cleaners to "cure COVID" from the same time period with geographic co-ordinates indicating that they were emitted from the Greater Boston Area.
Our main finding is that public health efforts were followed by a sustained increase in calls after March 15, 2020 (10 ± 2 calls per day before to 15 ± 2.5 after) while misinformation on social media was associated with intermittent spikes in calls. Overall, calls significantly increased during the study period by 34% as compared to the previous 8 years, mostly reporting unintentional ingestions with no serious effects. The daily volume of tweets and retweets was significantly correlated with daily call rates to MARI PCC for the surrounding 7-10 days.
Health misinformation on social media about using household cleaning agents to treat COVID-19 and public health efforts lead to different dynamics in PCC calls. Public health efforts were followed by a sustained increase in calls after March 15, 2020 while misinformation on social media was followed by intermittent spikes in calls. This analysis is the first to link the geospatial dynamics of social media and public health interventions to poison center calls about exposure to household cleaners.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，因接触家用清洁剂而向中毒控制中心求助的电话有所增加。这种变化可能反映了公共卫生工作导致的接触增加，以及社交媒体上传播的健康错误信息。
我们分析了为马萨诸塞州和罗得岛服务的地区中毒控制与预防中心（MARI PCC）的来电动态以及从 2020 年 1 月 20 日至 2020 年 5 月 5 日期间与用家用清洁剂治疗 COVID-19 有关的推文。我们从同一时期获得了具有地理坐标的、在推特上讨论用家用清洁剂“治愈 COVID”的公开推文，这些坐标表明它们是从大波士顿地区发出的。
我们的主要发现是，公共卫生工作之后，在 2020 年 3 月 15 日之后，呼叫持续增加（15 日之前为 10±2 次/天，之后为 15±2.5 次/天），而社交媒体上的错误信息与呼叫的间歇性激增有关。总体而言，与前 8 年相比，在研究期间，呼叫量增加了 34%，主要是报告无意识摄入，没有严重影响。推特的每日发帖量和转发量与 MARI PCC 周围 7-10 天的每日呼叫率显著相关。
关于使用家用清洁产品治疗 COVID-19 的社交媒体上的健康错误信息以及公共卫生工作，导致中毒控制中心呼叫出现不同的动态。2020 年 3 月 15 日之后，公共卫生工作之后，呼叫持续增加，而社交媒体上的错误信息之后，呼叫间歇性增加。这项分析首次将社交媒体的地理空间动态与公共卫生干预措施联系起来，以了解因接触家用清洁剂而中毒的中毒控制中心求助电话。
