Dangerous exposures to chemicals managed by Poison Centers all around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and proportional meta-analysis

Introduction. During COVID-19 pandemic, cleaning/disinfection activities were highly recommended. This study summarizes the state of art and estimates the prevalence of dangerous exposures to specific chemicals managed by Poison Centers (PCs) from all over the world during 2020 vs 2019, trying to overcome the critical aspects of the product categorization systems used by PCs. Materials and methods. A systematic research was conducted in 3 major databases and 2 websites of PCs associations. Proportional meta-analyses were performed to estimate the prevalence of exposures to disinfectants, household products and hand sanitizers in 2020 vs 2019. Results. The pooled prevalence of exposures to disinfectants, household products and hand sanitizers were respectively 5.9% (95% CI 4.9-7.0) (2019: 4.4% vs 2020: 7.8%; p=0.22), 25.9% (95% CI 24.0-27.7) (2019: 25.0% vs 2020: 28.6%; p=0.71) and 1.6% (95% CI 1.3-1.9) (2019: 0.6% vs 2020: 2.8%; p<0.001). Conclusions. This study detected overall increases of exposures to specific chemicals in 2020, suggesting that the awareness on topics related to the safe use of these products should be improved, especially during health emergencies, highlighting the need to develop standardized systems to better compare data coming from PCs all over the world.