Significant increase seen in crude nitrous oxide poisoning rate from 2010 to 2018, but no increase seen from 2019 to 2023
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Aug. 8, 2025 (HealthDay News) — From 2010 to 2023, there was an increase in nitrous oxide-related mortality, with the trend significant through 2018, according to a research letter published online July 30 in JAMA Network Open.
R. Andrew Yockey, Ph.D., from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, and Rachel A. Hoopsick, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, examined national trends in nitrous oxide poisoning mortality in the United States. Death certificate data from 2010 to 2023 were obtained using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research multiple causes of death database. The annual number of deaths involving nitrous oxide and the age-adjusted overdose mortality rates per 100,000 population were examined among U.S. residents aged 15 to 74 years.
The researchers identified 1,240 deaths attributable to nitrous oxide poisoning among people aged 15 to 74 years in the United States from 2010 to 2023, with 23 and 156 deaths observed in 2010 and 2023, respectively. There was variation in the crude rate of deaths involving nitrous oxide poisoning from a low of 0.0100 per 100,000 population in 2010 to a high of 0.0622 per 100,000 population in 2023. A statistically significant change was seen in the crude nitrous oxide poisoning rate from 2010 to 2018 (annual percentage change, 24.5 percent). No crude mortality rate increase was seen from 2019 to 2023.
“Public awareness is far behind where it needs to be,” Hoopsick said in a statement. “Most people — including parents, educators and even some health care providers — don’t realize how common nitrous oxide use has become or how dangerous it can be.”
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