On September 26, 2019, an industrial fire occurred in the Lubrizol factory in Rouen (France), exposing the population to the inhalation of many volatile toxic agents secondary to combustion.

To assess its impact on the incidence of coronary artery events.

All coronary angiography performed in Rouen (exposed) and Le Havre (unexposed) from January 2019 and December 2019 were extracted from the prospective FRANCE-PCI registry. To study the impact of the fire on coronary events, an interrupted time series analysis was performed in Rouen, with adjustment on Le Havre in an ARMA(1,1) model with the precision of one week. This statistical analysis has the advantage of taking into account a possible seasonal effect. The primary outcome was the incidence of all coronary events and the secondary outcome was the variation in incidence of ST-segment elevation myocardial infraction (STEMI).

In the 21 weeks preceding the fire, there were a mean of 62.0±10.1 coronary events per week in the exposed town, non-significantly increasing to 70.6±10.5 in the 14 weeks following the fire, with an estimated increase of +5.5 events/week (95% CI: −6.0 to +16.9, P=0.36). The mean number of STEMI events per week in Rouen changed from 6.19±2.96 before to 7.93±3.65 after the fire, with a difference estimated at +1.8 events/week (95% CI: −0.5 to +4.1, P=0.13) (Fig. 1).

Our study did not find a significant effect of the Lubrizol factory fire on the incidence of coronary events. Further studies are needed to investigate the impact of industrial accidents on coronary events.