Patrick Smith to Chair CO Data Surveillance Work Group
REM’s Patrick Smith to Chair the National Carbon Monoxide Awareness Association’s (NCOAA) Data Surveillance Workgroup alongside NCOAA’s Christina Binknowski. The NCOAA is hosting its first CO Safety Summit this year in conjunction with the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM) 33rd Annual Fire Prevention & Safety Symposium. At the summit, the Data Surveillance Workgroup will launch along with other CO focused work groups for Emergency & Trades, Codes, Standards & Regulations, and Science & Innovation. These workgroups will work together throughout the year on a variety of topics.
One of the greatest challenges related to carbon monoxide safety is that the surveillance data collected on carbon monoxide injuries and deaths is fragmented and incomplete. There is no national surveillance system that specifically monitors carbon monoxide poisoning, resulting in significant underreporting of deaths and injuries in the US.
Improving data collection and analysis of carbon monoxide poisoning incidents is needed in order to effectively advocate for change. The Data Surveillance work group will review existing data sources, make recommendations for changes to the reporting systems, and conduct or support independent research on carbon monoxide poisoning prevalence. The work group’s goal for the first year is to support research on the prevalence of carbon monoxide poisoning.
REM’s work on CO data has been previously published in the Journal of Preventative Medicine Reports. The paper, Analyzing the National Fire Incident Reporting System to Identify Carbon Monoxide Incidents in the U.S. Lodging Industry is a continuation of previous efforts to document CO incidents at U.S. hotels and motels. In the paper, REM uses the NFIRS database to identify 3,405 CO incidents in the U.S. lodging industry; previous efforts had only identified 367 incidents through news reports. As a result, REM’s research shows the lodging industry CO incidents occur at far greater rates than previously realized, indicating a larger public health risk associated with lodging industry CO exposure. The incidents identified through REM’s research have been presented in an interactive map detailing the locations and details of what occurred.
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