Poisoning is a common cause of emergency room visits in China, contributing to the fifth leading cause of death among Chinese residents together with injury. This paper describes the development characteristics and morbidity tendency of poisoning in China, in the context of social development in a domestic and foreign view. In addition, the key points to the construction of the discipline and key research realms of poisoning are emphasized, including focusing on the major types of poisoning, evaluating the effectiveness of gastrointestinal decontamination techniques, developing and applying extracorporeal elimination techniques, poison detection techniques, and developing toxic bio-identification techniques.
