Unintentional Injuries and Death

Every week the NCHS contributes a feathure called QuickStats to the CDC professional journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). For the week of April 6, 2007 the feature was entitled Percentage Change in Death Rates for the Leading Causes of Unintentional Injury, by Mechanism of Injury — United States, 1999–2004.

During 1999–2004, age-adjusted unintentional injury death rates increased 6.8%, from 35.3 per 100,000 population to 37.7. This increase was attributed primarily to increases in rates from motorcycle crashes, poisoning (including unintentional drug overdose), and falls. Similar but smaller increases were observed for these causes in 2003, thus the upward trend continued in 2004.