January 3, 2012
Categories: Health News
Posted by Tim Darragh at 11:06:10 AM on January 3, 2012
There's a new leading cause of death by injury in the United States, and the people of Pennsylvania are contributing in a big way to the trend, new data show.In a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers announced that poisoning replaced car accidents as the leading cause of injury deaths in the United States. Looking at data from 2008, the researchers from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics found that the combination of intensive auto safety efforts and the proliferation of opioid analgesics flipped a nearly 30-year trend.
Since 1980, it said, the rate of auto deaths fell by half, while the rate of drug poisonings tripled.
Why? More than 41,000 Americans died from overuse of opioid analgesics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone in 2008, the researchers found. In that year, 2,031 Pennsylvanians were poisoned, mostly on drug overdoses, it said. It also said the rate of injury deaths by poisoning -- 16.4 people per 1,000 -- was significantly higher than the national rate of 13.4.
And, the study had another finding that turned conventional wisdom on its head. These drug poisoning deaths are happening predominantly among middle-aged white and Native American men.
The "vast majority" of these deaths, the researchers added, were unintentional.
The approximately 15,000 opioid analgesic poisonings caused around three times as many deaths as cocaine, they noted.
The researchers concluded that government-led improvements in vehicle and road design, efforts to increase the use of seat belts and decrease driving under the influence led to the dramatic decline in road deaths.
"Using a comprehensive, multifaceted approach," they said, "it may be possible to reverse the trend in drug poisoning mortality."
ABOUT THE WRITERS
TIM DARRAGH has been reporting and editing the news for 30 years, most of it at The Morning Call. For much of that time, he's been doing award-winning investigative and in-depth reporting projects. Tim created the three-year-long Change of Heart project, and wrote a series on the state's fractured food inspection system that led to widespread improvements in food safety. Meantime, that novice jogger you see plodding along the streets around Bethlehem Township? That would be Tim.
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