With the lazy, carefree days of summer in full swing, we're pretty sure that the last thing you want to think about is getting injured. The Centers for Disease Control, however, hopes you'll keep it in mind. They recently released a report, published in the Lancet, stating that the number one cause of death for Americans under age 30 is unintentional injury (including car accidents, poisoning, falls, suffocation, drowning, fire, and others).
Crunch the numbers another way, and they're even more startling: Nearly 180,000 people die every year from preventable injuries and violence, amounting to one death every three minutes. While homicide and suicide (numbers two and three on the list) get a huge share of media attention, fatal injuries are actually more common, states the report.
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If there's any upside here, it's that most of these injuries can be prevented, write the authors. Sometimes it's just about using inexpensive, science-backed solutions like child safety seats and seatbelts. Other tactics referenced in the report include longer-term solutions, such as violence-prevention programs in schools.
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The authors call for public health officials to start framing injuries as avoidable, and to spread the word about effective interventions so these crazy-high stats start coming down. In the meantime, keep an eye out for risky situations in your own home or neighborhood that could lead to injury—an unsupervised pool or grill, for example—and take steps to prevent it.
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