The Major Cause Of Death In American Children Isn’t Disease But Injury Caused By Car Crashes, Firearms
But the authors did see some good news in the car crash statistics as safety features and drunken driving initiatives helped cut the numbers in the past two decades.
Los Angeles Times:
More Than 15% Of Childhood Deaths In America Are Due To Guns, Study Says
More than 3,000 children and adolescents died of a gunshot wound in the United States in 2016, a new tally of childhood deaths finds. These episodes accounted for 15.4% of all Americans between the ages of 1 and 19 who died in 2016, and a quarter of those killed by injury rather than disease. As they inch their way back to rates last seen in 1999, childhood deaths attributed to firearms — 3,143 — generated 70% more grieving families than those produced by pediatric cancer — 1,853. Guns also broke the hearts of more than three times as many families than did childhood drownings — 995 — or the combined category of poisoning deaths and fatal drug overdoses — 982. (Healy, 12/19)
In other public health news —
KQED:
Camp Fire Caused Nearly 2 Straight Weeks Of Bay Area's Worst Air Quality On Record
From Nov. 8 to Nov. 20, the region was choked by dangerously high levels of fine particulate matter, ranking among the worst periods of hazardous smoke since the Bay Area Air Quality Management District began keeping such records in 1999. All of the district's 17 monitoring stations — spread through eight Bay Area counties — detected high concentrations of the pollutant. (Goldberg, 12/19)
San Jose Mercury News:
Whooping Cough Cases Spike Again In Marin County
Marin County’s Department of Health and Human Services reported 229 cases this year of pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough — the largest outbreak in the county since 2014. Statewide, 2,942 cases were reported since Jan. 1. Outbreaks commonly occur every three to five years, the department said. (Pera, 12/20)