What Is The Most Distinctive Cause Of Death In PA?

The Centers for Disease Control recently released a peer-reviewed study that lists the most distinctive causes of death by state.

The study lists the cause of death in each state that stands out the most compared to the national average.

Pennsylvania’s top definitive ways to die are pneumoconiosis (black lung disease) and “chemical effects.”

Black lung disease is described by the American Lung Association as an “occupational lung disease,” contracted by breathing in coal dust.

Health activists can look to the coal region of northeast Pennsylvania as one reason for the labelling.

The study was commissioned in part due to the popularity of map-based statistics on social media, the CDC said.

“Maps of the most distinctive or characteristic value of some variable at the state or country level became popular on social media in 2014,” the study noted.

But health experts said that there were other more scientific and research benefits of the study.

“Although chronic disease prevention efforts should continue to emphasize the most common conditions, an outlier map such as this one should also be of interest to public health professionals,” the study says. “Particularly insofar as it highlights nonstandard cause-of-death certification practices within and between states that can potentially be addressed through education and training.”

Some states competed for the most distinctive of all the distinctive ways to die.

“Legal intervention” was leading cause of death in Nevada, while ”accidental discharge of firearms” was the culprit in Tennessee and Alabama.

Nearby New Jersey suffered most distinctively from septicemia, while Delaware fell ill to athersclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Image credit: Centers for Disease Control