The products most associated with emergency room visits

I was wondering about this as well. Maybe people transported to the hospital via ambulance aren’t included in these numbers?

There are lots and lots of vehicle injuries. I think someone identified above the relevant categories above. There are very few accidental (non-criminal) firearms injuries. Still, the number of firearms injuries is greater than 1 per month, so it seems like it should be on there somewhere. Maybe it’s in one of the circles overlapped by another.

More importantly, I know now that I was a fool and a terrible parent for sending my kids to snowboarding lessons in January. Obviously June/July/August are the optimal time for this.

Won’t make this mistake again.

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I’m guessing an important point is that the data is cherry-picked to apparently only include self-inflicted injuries (ruling out a lot of crime and traffic-related stuff) and to only include incidents related to “consumer products”.

All injuries where a consumer product, sport, or recreational activity is associated with the reason for the visit or related to a condition treated.

Of course this information does nothing to explain why “floor” or “all terrain vehicle, 4-wheeled” are considered consumer products but a car or gun aren’t. Same for bicycle (included) vs. motorcycle (excluded), and so on.

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smooth, dan. Smooth. :wink:

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That’s just a theory, man. :wink:

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Didn’t you hear?

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If omission of products is counted then omission of medication, including alcohol, for severe depression, bipolar or schizophrenic disorders is central.

Handing mentally ill substance abusers the keys to a new place may sound like an example of wasteful government spending. But it turned out to be the opposite:

. . . Lloyd Pendleton, the director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, told me of one individual whose care one year cost nearly a million dollars, and said that, with the traditional approach, the average chronically homeless person used to cost Salt Lake City more than twenty thousand dollars a year.

Putting someone into permanent housing costs the state just eight thousand dollars, and that’s after you include the cost of the case managers who work with the formerly homeless to help them adjust.

The same is true elsewhere. A Colorado study found that the average homeless person cost the state forty-three thousand dollars a year, while housing that person would cost just seventeen thousand dollars.

Via James Surowiecki.

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Here is the coding manual that explains what is and is not reported as an injury involving a consumer product (“A consumer product is any article produced or distributed for use by a consumer in or around a home, school or recreational area”):


I haven’t combed through it thoroughly, but it’s interesting. Fall on the floor in your house? Yep. Fall on the sidewalk outside? Nope.

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That was my thinking: that gun and automobile injuries are more likely to get you an ambulance ride. Though it seems cars just aren’t included at all, even if you do go to the emergency room to get checked out, as @Mister44 mentioned.

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Not to mention the very literal survivorship bias at play. Not many ER visits for the already-dead-when-we-got-there cases, I gather.

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If my floor is so dangerous I should live in orbit for my own safety.

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One of my favourite Darwin award nominees: Claude François, who composed the tune to My Way, died in Paris when he tried to change a light bulb while having a bath.

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That sounds like he committed suicide. :cry:

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I sleep on my gun. only way to be safe.

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So I guess you get a lot of “Boom Boom” with that?

Shit. I used nails to build my bed which sits on a floor not far from a chair. I had no idea every night we go to sleep in a veritable death trap!

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The whole world is a death trap.

And life is a sexually transmitted disease that’s 100% fatal.

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I can’t like you for 4 minutes. Grrr. Why is gravity a theory but daily likes a fundamental law of the universe?

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I’ll wait.

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Like Donald Trump thinking he’s cool at an Italian Disco.

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