By Jennifer Litz
Editor
October 8, 2007 It’s a morbid thought (but then, it is Halloween): How will you die? Sure, you’ve probably heard that heart disease and cancer are likely to kill you if you live long enough, but you probably wouldn’t guess that “accidents” rank so high on the list of local top killers. Lung diseases also seem to prove especially deadly in San Angelo.
Below is a list of the top ten killers for Tom Green County. It was taken from The Texas Department of State Health Services, and cross-referenced with a separate set of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose workers, CDC data analyst William Crews says, garnered their information from the County’s Department of Health. These two lists differ slightly in their classifications and groupings of similar diseases; therefore, the State’s list was used.
(It should be noted that The County Health Department was not able to help “localize” each of the following killers to the San Angelo community—i.e., how the San Angelo physical and work environment and demographic makeup may affect each death causes’ placement on this list. Though the CDC’s Crews claims the agency got its cause of death rankings from the Tom Green County Health Department, Marie Aguilar from that Department says they mostly deal with immunization records and initiatives. They don’t have funding to do much else, she says, and cause of death statistics are held at some “state holdings” agency in Midland. Hmmm.)
1. Diseases of the heart
Heart disease is the leading cause of death nationwide, and San Angelo isn’t exempt to this statistic. According to statistics from the American Heart Association for the latest year on record, 2004, “one in three men and women have cardiovascular disease,” which includes high blood pressure, coronary heart disease (including myocardial infarctions [heart attack] and angina pectoris [chest pains]), and stroke.
The American Heart Association Web site is a valuable resource for those afflicted with or at risk for the disease. For example, did you know that drinking more than one soft drink daily —regular or diet — may be associated with an increase in the risk factors for heart disease? Visit www.americanheart.org for this and other “breaking” heart news.
2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
Also a national leading cause of death, San Angelo’s leading cancers are those of the lung. Nationally, this is the most prevalently terminal cancer, followed by prostate and breast cancers for men and women, respectively. According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, the leading cause of lung cancer is cigarette smoking, but exposure to environmental pollutants is also a factor. Unfortunately, early detection does not seem to help survival rates among those affected.
3. Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (or COPD, which encompasses chronic bronchitis and emphysema—airflow-obstructing diseases—because these two conditions tend to coexist) and cystic fibrosis. The Lung Association of America puts COPD as the fourth leading cause of death in America, with smoking being the disease’s primary cause. Other contributors to COPD include air pollution, second-hand smoke, history of childhood respiratory infections and heredity. Interestingly, non-smoker COPD cases have been increasingly attributed to workplace and industrial pollutants: a recent study puts this contributor at 31 percent culpability for non-smokers. Could San Angelo’s booming farming and oil sectors be contributing to San Angeloans poor lung health?
4. Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention put CVD as the third cause of death nationally for the most recent year on record.
5. Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetes is one of those horrible “gateway” diseases: The American Heart Association reports in a 2007 statistical fact sheet that heart and blood vessel diseases account for more than 65 percent of diabetes mellitus deaths. More and more of San Angelo’s sizeable Hispanic population is doubtless having better access to medical diagnoses. And this may explain the high number of diabetes-related deaths reported in the area.
6. Accidents
The National Safety Council released a press release deeming accidents the No. 1 cause of death for people below the age of 41 in America. Further data reveals that, in Texas, the top five accident-related deaths are from motor vehicle crashes, falls, poisoning, drowning, and choking, in that order.
America is in something of an accident epidemic right now. NSC President Alan McMillian says that one person dies of an accident every five minutes, and medical expenditures due to accidents are surpassed only by costs for heart disease and cancer. Over a 10-year period, accidental deaths have risen more than twenty percent as of 2005—leaving the NSC to warn that the nation’s all-time high of 116,385 accidental deaths in 1969 could be surpassed shortly.
7. Influenza and pneumonia
Though much is made of influenza vaccines and deadly flu strains, only 24 cases of influenza and pneumonia were reported for Tom Green County in 2004, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services—with 17 of these cases occurring in the 75-and-over age range, and five in the 65-to-74 range. Most deaths were due to pneumonia.
8. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis (kidney disease)
9. Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids (lung failure)
The CDC, in a report called “Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2001,” listed pneumonitis as the No. 15 cause of death nationwide.
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