Analysis of paraquat poisoning cases in Kumamoto red cross hospital. Focus on the actual state and problems of paraquat poisoning / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

The paraquat liquid is a kind of herbicides which have extremely high mortality rate. A few years ago, such crimes as the paraquat liquid is poured into soft drinks occurred frequently and paraquat poisoning became a serious social problem. And now the lower concentrated paraquat liquid is on sale.<BR>We experienced 190 paraquat poisoning cases for the past twelve years in Kumamoto Red Cross Hospital. Although the treatments of paraquat poisoning were improved at 1982, the mortality rate is extremely high (63.7%) as ever. Moreover paraquat poisoning cases have not been decreased for the last few years.<BR>Judging from the latest trend of paraquat poisoning cases, miss-drinking cases and accidental cases during agricultural works are decreasing. This fact shows improvement of the knowledge about paraquat poisoning in the population. However suicide cases are increasing. On the other hand, paraguat poisoning occurred in the same frequency between farmers and non-farmers. Moreover accidents by former products, which are discontinued selling, are frequent as before. From these facts, we feel sales control and supervision of the paraquat liquid is unsatisfactory. But the fact that former products were not collected and the use of them was not forbidden is one of more important problems. The lower concentrated paraquat liquid still have high mortarity rate (70.0%) in addition.<BR>There is no certain treatment for paraquat poisoning. And paraquat poisoning include many problems which cannot be solved only by the consciousness of the users and the administrative advices. From now on, it is natural to make efforts to solve various problems we are faced. Moreover it seems to be necessary to reconsider the worth of the paraquat liquid for preventing social crimes, too.