I saw a meme on Facebook in which various diseases and their annual death tolls such as Ebola were listed, leading up to the number of people killed by policemen–1100, which was far higher than any of the others on the list.
In a reply, I added:
*Automobiles–50,000
Fires–11,000
Drowning–about 3500 *
What I would like to know is : 1) Are my totals accurate and 2) are there other high annual death totals, not related to disease or criminal intent, that are close to auto accidents, fires, and drowning in terms of quantity?
Where?
US auto deaths are around 30K/year.
4,250 worker deaths in 2014 due to job-related activities.
U. S. deaths, only, for simplicity’s sake.
The World Health Organization has a Mortality Database, where they list this info, based on statistics provided by their member nations (some more accurate than others).
The top 10 are: (from 2012, latest full year)
[ol]
[li]heart disease, 7.4 million [/li][li]stroke, 6.7 million[/li][li]chronic obstructive lung disease, 3.1 million[/li][li]lower respiratory infections, 3.1 million[/li][li]trachea bronchus, lung cancer, 1.6 million[/li][li]HIV, 1.5 million [/li][li]Diarrhea 1.5 million[/li][li]Diabetes, 1.5 million[/li][li]Traffic accidents, 1.3 million[/li][li]Hypertension, 1.1 million[/li][/ol]Those 10 make up about 21 million of the 28 million deaths that year (3,200/hour). Note that smoking tobacco is related to 1-5 and 10 on that list.
But they were about 50,000 for several years. It looks like the OP found an accurate but outdated list somewhere.
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979 (US 2013)
Unintentional poisoning 38,851(US 2013)
Unintentional fall deaths 30,208 (US 2013 same as above cite)
I thank those who have answered; I also wanted to get a handle on things (not all of which have been left unanswered) such as:
Homicide.
Suicide.
Attacks by animals and insects.
Electrocution.
“Symptoms and ill-defined conditions” (as the World Almanac has listed it).
Improper treatment in medical facilities.
Lightning and other natural phenomena.
This is starting to sound like the plot of The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
The original Facebook post clearly selected some statistics that, correct or not, supported their particular case. This is a not uncommon way of trying to make a point.
A couple comments from an ED doc to put these in perspective:
Influenza and pneumonia mostly bump off people whose bodies are otherwise already trying to die.
“Unintentional poisoning” would have to include likker, recreational drugs and narcotics (legal or illegal) to get that number. IOW the “unintentional” does not refer to the fact that the individual had no idea what they were ingesting or inhaling.
It’s pretty rare that I’ve seen someone actually die from a true accidental poisoning as in the kid ate a handful of Granpa’s digoxin (mushrooms excepted, I guess, and even that’s not very common).
Falls for sure; but again I bet it’s the elderly who represent the vast bulk.