To date, more than 90% of the bird flu victims have been under the age of 44. But what's the leading cause of death in people between the ages of 1 and 44 in the US? And the fifth leading cause of death (after heart disease, stroke, cancer and chronic respiratory disease) for overall? And largely preventable? Answer below the fold.
Injury. And working teenagers are among the victims:
Despite federal regulations intended to protect them, many teenagers in the U.S. use dangerous equipment or work long hours during the school week, according to a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.
The national study was based on telephone surveys of 928 teenaged workers, 14 to 18 years old. The results show 52 percent of males and 43 percent of females use dangerous equipment such as box crushers and slicers, or serve and sell alcohol where it is consumed, despite federal child labor laws prohibiting these practices.
[snip]
Additionally, 84 percent of females and 61 percent of males handle cash in their jobs, exposing them to risks associated with robberies. Homicides during robberies were the cause of up to one half of all youth fatalities in the retail trade.
"Many teenagers start working at an early age, and most find jobs in retail or service industries. Our aim is to examine the conditions under which they are working, and suggest ways to protect them at work," said lead study author Carol Runyan, Ph.D., director of UNC's [Universith of North Carolina] Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) and professor of health behavior and health education in the UNC School of Public Health, [publishing in the journal Pediatrics, March 11, 2007].
Many teens younger than 16 years old reported working after 7 p.m. on school nights, which is illegal, Runyan said, and suggests the need for better enforcement of child labor laws. Some teens said they worked after 11 p.m. on school nights, potentially interfering with school or sleep. (University of North Carolina, news release)
Teens are employed to save money. Safety costs money. Ergo, too little attention is paid to safety. There are child labor laws to restrict the kinds of work teens can do and how many hours a week they can do, but employers ignore them and the federal government lets it happen.
Why so much hell raised about failure to enforce immigration laws, when we are silent about failure to enforce laws that are killing young people? But maybe it's just me. Maybe my priorities are misplaced.
- Log in to post comments
OK, count me baffled. This post is about causes of death, right?
Fair enough - that's a cause for concern (though of course one needs to know more about such matters as the design of the equipment and the training given before one can really draw conclusions)
What?? What possible relevance has this got to the subject? Are we to believe that the fumes from a glass of beer or wine are lethal to a teenager? And if so, why are teenagers in France and Spain (where it is quite normal to drink wine from around the age of eight or nine) not dropping like flies in an icestorm?
According to the link that you posted, motor vehicle accidents make up close to 70% of traumatic deaths between ages 15-24, which is, of course, not a surprise to me given that I used to cover a fair amount of trauma surgery and that I was a helicopter flight physician for two years back in the early 1990's. It was far and away the most common cause of traumatic death, not surprisingly. In those figures, firearm injuries make up 1.1% of traumatic deaths machinery causes 0.4% of traumatic deaths.
Far be it from me to say that we shouldn't enforce such laws, but in reality the far bigger problem is vehicular trauma among teens and young adults. A reduction in that would yield far greater dividends.
My youngest brother worked in convenience stores for years. Getting a gun stuck in his face was a monthly occurance.
Stephen, your point would be?
Orac: You are right. One of the most dangerous things we do is get in cars. But note it used to be far worse. We've spent a lot of time and expense in reducing motor vehicle fatalities and the same is not true of teen age injuries at work. It isn't just death, although the title of the post implied that (my fault). It is burns and lacerations and amputations and much else, and the teens don't report much of it for fear of losing their jobs and other factors. The laws go unenforced and no one seems to care much about it (although it is well known). Immigrants are the big topic. Priorities.
Stephen: It is about enforcement of child safety and labor laws, priorities and about the public health burden of injury. Injuries are the major cause of death up to age 44 and the post was also meant to be about injury, more generally. It used the recent paper in Pediatrics as a hook. Ages 1 to 44 are low mortality risk, but high risk for injury, both fatal and non-fatal.
revere:
You sure went around the block to try and make your point...
But I agree with Orac. If we want to speak of injury to teens and young adults, motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) are at the TOP of the list! Put a teen in a car and you have a big potential for injur(y)ies, especially if you add in a few friends and some alcohol and a young age.
When I used to be a member of the transplant team, we wouldn't have had many organs donated if it weren't for teens and MVAs. Sad, but true! And the injuries/deaths they caused weren't only to themselves or their friends, but to innocent strangers.
Today, I heard another new twist on this topic. It seems young Hispanic males coming across the border, have a 3 time higher DUI rate than non-Hispanics. It was stated that this has a cultural spin to it, in that young Hispanic males view drinking as a macho activity. But they tend to have more money and thus more access to cars here in the US than in Mexico, resulting in more DUIs and more accidents.
IMO, if ya wanna talk injury to teens, it's all about MVAs. Teen brains are still immature and it is a gamble until they are "fully cooked." Let's talk graduated licensure for new drivers. Let's talk licensure at an age later than 16. Let's talk zero tolerance for DUIs - get caught and lose your license until 21.
Sure, the workplace issue can be a problem, but on the Public Health risk/benefit ratio, it ranks far below the rates for MVAs, assaults, homicides or even suicides.
Melanie: I think you are the one who needs to ask yourself what your point is. Firstly, I was not aware that convenience stores were generally licensed for selling alcohol for consumption on the premises (but OK, perhaps they are where you live). Secondly, suppose that one particular member of staff may, due to his/her age, not sell alcohol, but only the several hundred other products in the store. How exactly will that reduce the frequency of armed robberies?
Revere: I would suggest that the existence of stupid clauses in labour laws could be a demotivating factor in enforcing (the sensible parts of) the laws. It is, to put it very mildly, hard to see how it is safe for a waitress to serve a restaurant customer with hot soup, steak and coffee, but dangerous to serve a glass of wine with the steak.
The state my brother lived in didn't allow the sale of alcohol outside of liquor stores. For many young people who work in such establishments, getting shot was one of the hazards of youth.
What follows is an edited copy of an email sent re: the advert for the upcoming Harvard Business Preparedness for Pandemic Leadership Summit, in Boston, May 14-16, 2007...
The probability of a multistrained H2H H5 pandemic (with a contemporary CFR of 80% -- that'd be billions of dead, not millions) killing off the younger human generations raises Freudian questions re: the B-Boomer generation's collective political and scientific denial of the implications of H5N1 way back in the early days of transgenic genesis (1997 and 98).
Mmmmmnnnnnnnnnn, smells like teen spirit -- literally!
To: "Harvard Health Publications"
conferences@hbsp.harvard.edu.
Web @
[h]ttps://secure.ed4.net/hbsp/pandemic/home.cfm?l=&c=&e=
Friday Apr 06, 2007
Harvard Advert: "There is widespread agreement that
the effects of a pandemic could be devastating. Recent
estimates predict 60 - 80 million deaths worldwide. Up
to 40% of workers unable to perform normally - perhaps
for weeks. Possible quarantines and travel
restrictions. The impact on your workers, suppliers,
customers, and financial markets will be dramatic.
Your organization can be prepared - and this event is
the first step."
Howdy,
As a freelance H5N1 research analyst, I couldn't help
notice a discrepancy whilst reading your "Harvard's
Business Preparedness for Pandemic Leadership Summit,
Boston, May 14-16." The H5N1 CFR in both Egypt and
Indonesia hovers between 70-80%. When one factors in
age-dependent differences in host susceptibility to H5
infection and couples it to the sociopolitical reality
that 1·5 billion kids, teens and young adults live in
poverty stricken developing countries (refer to NEJM
and Lancet correspondence/article below)...
Once H2H H5 becomes a widespread global phenomenon, I
can only but assume American science and reality will
once again be reunited -- the business community can
hang its collective head in shame for their culpable
support of the "science hating" Bush administration --
trillions of '03-'07 dollars misspent on the warped
colonial frack-up aka "The War on Terror", and not on
pragmatic pandemic preparedness.
Cheers:*) and Aloha pumehana -- Jon
The New England Journal of Medicine -- Human H5N1
Influenza (Correspondence) Goicoechea, M., Pawitan,
J. A., Dudley, J. P., et al, 356:1375-1377 March 29,
2007 Number 13
[h]ttp://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/13/1375?ct
Excerpt: "[Higher] incidence rates in children may
represent age-dependent differences in host
susceptibility to H5N1 virus infection. Human
infection is mediated by a receptor recognized by
avian influenza (2,3-linked sialic acid) that is
expressed in the lower respiratory tract. In children
this receptor may be expressed in the upper airway,
increasing the risk of infection.
Indeed, 2,3-linked sialic acids are homogeneously
distributed in the human fetal lung, and the
expression of the receptor appears to decrease with
age..."
Lancet.com -- "Us and them: worldwide health issues
for adolescents" by Michael D Resnick and Glenn Bowes
The Lancet 2007; 369:1058-1060 Number 9567, 31 March
2007
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60372-9
www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607603729/fulltext
Excerpt: "There are 1·75 billion people aged 1024
years worldwide, 1·5 billion of whom live in
developing countries. In least-developed nations,
young people make up more than a third of the
populationie, the poorer the country, the younger its
population. In countries with a large number of
youthful people who are poor, unemployed, and likely
to have few countervailing opportunities, the
likelihood of widespread violence and governmental
instability is increased..."
Stephen : I'm sorry to contradict, but in no way is it ordinary in France for children to drink wine at the age of 9. It might have been sometime during the 19th century, but society has changed since. Most teens get their first taste of wine around 14 or 15. And in my experience it's just half a glass or so with a meal.
Hi Jon!
Stephen's right. I'm not seeing the logical connection between teenaged workers who
and
Seriously; why even mention the alcohol part?
Azkyroth: Alcohol is mentioned in passing in the news release from UNC. It relates to enforcement of child safety laws, but is otherwise not important to the main point. Why it is a fixation here is a bit of a mystery to me.