Risk of Death
| S E V E R E Driving off the road: 254,419 Falling: 146,542 Accidental poisoning: 140,327 |
From:Wired News: One Million Ways to Die "Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist -- at least, statistically speaking. In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is. With that in mind, here's a handy ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data). |
| H I G H Dying from work: 59,730 Walking down the street: 52,000. Accidentally drowning: 38,302 | |
| E L E V A T E D Killed by the flu: 19,415 Dying from a hernia: 16,742 | |
| G U A R D E D Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536 Electrocution: 5,171 | |
| L O W Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949 Terrorism: 3147 Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554 | |
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I don't understand this one. Where does alcohol and tobacco come into play. Does alcohol have to do with the first three items? And it seems as if they placed tobacco down as the very last thing. Unless they consider tobacoo not the reason for dying. Unless cancer becomes the reason for dying and not tobacco, I don't see how it could not be higher. Smoking, I believe, causes more deaths than they talked about here.
Posted by: Growly-Pants at April 23, 2007 6:58 PM