Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people have died from inhaling nitrous oxide.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have therefore asked the Authority to respond.

Dear Lord Kennedy,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking how many people have died from inhaling nitrous oxide (HL7033).

In March 2018 we published a report providing the number of deaths related to volatile substance abuse and helium in England, Wales and Scotland[1]. This report describes trends in deaths involving volatile substances registered between 2001 and 2016 in Great Britain. Please see table 1 below for data where types of volatile substance are mentioned on the death certificate from the March 2018 publication. We would recommend referring to the report, where possible, due to the complexity of the methodology surrounding the use of coroner’s text to identify relevant deaths.

Following the March 2018 publication, we published ad-hoc requests from members of the public, which include: the number of deaths in England and Wales involving nitrogen and nitrous oxide 2001-2016[2]; and deaths where nitrous oxide was mentioned on the death certificate 1993-2017[3]. Please note, published figures differ across these datasets due to the methodology used and the differing definitions of nitrous oxide deaths.

We intend to publish an update of the volatile substance report and accompanying datasets later this year. This is dependent on resource due to the current pandemic.

Yours sincerely

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Table 1: Number of deaths related to volatile substance abuse, where types of volatile substance mentioned on the death certificate, England and Wales, deaths registered in 2001 to 2016[4][5][6][7][8]

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/deathsrelatedtovolatilesubstancesandheliumingreatbritain/latest

[2]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/008203deathsinvolvingnitrogenandnitrousoxideinenglandandwales2001to2016

[3]https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/009096drugrelateddeathsinvolvingnitrousoxideinenglandandwales1993to2017

[4]Cause of death was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth revision (ICD-10) codes.

[5]Figures for England and Wales include deaths of non-residents.

[6]Figures are for deaths registered rather than occurring in each calendar year.

[7]Specific substances included in each category, details are available in the published dataset.

[8]Counts total to more than the total number of VSA deaths, because more than one substance group can be involved in a single death.