Here’s an infographic featuring counts of men in the United States who will die in 2008, broken down into various causes ranging from all types of cancer (about 308,000) to suicide (about 26,000) to HIV/AIDS (about 8,500).
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
The numbers are projections based on the CDC’s WONDER database. WONDER stands for “Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research”; it’s a collection of data that’s available to public health professionals and the public at large, boasting a wide array of public health information.
I had no idea that you were almost 3 times more likely to die from falling down stairs than from getting electrocuted. I should hang onto bannisters more often.
7 Comments
Which category includes people who are killed in war? Homicide?
This would make an awesome t-shirt or poster
it could have been better… the objects could be sized appropriately. that one shark attack is pretty big.
The shark attack happened last week, so I guess we can swim safely.
Mmmh, it makes sens, how often do you walk down stairs? and how often do you play with live wires? There you go.
Well we could save 48 lives by destroying all bees and spiders. And all we’d have to give up is bee vomit (honey) and dusting the corners where the cobwebs are. Science can probably come up with a nanobot to do the pollination thing. Sounds like a fair trade.
I am vaguely envious of the 270 that go out by alcohol poisoning.
@Chris Taylor: I can deal without cobwebs, but I want my bee vomit-garlic chicken wings and bee vomit-roasted peanuts!
As for the alcohol poisoning, I would have guessed that alcohol poisonings would outnumber falling-down-staircase deaths. Then again, many of those falling-down-staircase deaths were probably caused by alcohol!
That’s a good point, there is probably some tie-in there. Ditto deaths by vehicle accidents (driving or being hit by). Maybe falling from stuff too.