A death map released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the most distinctive causes of fatalities in each state. Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of mortality around the United States, but this new map shows which distinctive diseases are responsible for the greatest number of deaths across the country.
Some of the ratings were not surprising, such as in mining states of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky, where pneumoconioses, brought on by inhaling certain dusts, was the most distinctive cause of death. In Maine, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, influenza led the list. Fatalities due to plane and boat crashes were deemed to be most distinctive in Idaho and Alaska.
Deaths by law enforcement officials, which have resulted in protests and riots around the nation, were rated as the most distinctive cause of mortality in New Mexico, Oregon, and Nevada. Sepsis, a body's reaction to an infection, was determined to be New Jersey's most distinctive method of death.
Researchers began creating the chart by studying 113 different causes of death from 2001 to 2010, utilizing databases at the CDC. They compared average death rates from each cause nationwide to that seen in each state. Those causes of fatality found to be the greatest in each state, compared with the national average, were declared to be the most distinctive form of death in that region.
It is predisposed to show rare causes of death - in 22 states, the most distinctive cause of death resulted in fewer than 100 fatalities, including the 22 fatalities from syphilis recorded in Louisiana. Only four out of every 100,000 Alaskans die in plane or boat accidents, but that rate is nearly 6.7 times as great as that seen in the rest of the country and can be attributed to the many parts of the state accessible only by plane or boat.
"If something is almost nonexistent everywhere in the country, but there's a handful of them in one state, then that could show up," co-author Francis P. Boscoe of the New York State Cancer Registry, who led the development of the new death map of the United States, said.
One of the challenges in creating the death map was that many states choose their own methods of coding the cause of fatalities on death certificates. The procedure is supposed to be standardized, but inconsistencies among the various states remain.
"Although chronic-disease-prevention efforts should continue to emphasize the most common [national] conditions, an outlier map such as this one should also be of interest to public health professionals," researchers wrote in an article accompanying the new map.
Development of the map was detailed on Preventing Chronic Disease, carried on the CDC Web site.
