Accidents lead causes of death

By April M. Silvaggio  

MARCH 15, 2010 9:34 a.m. (0)

Southern fried cooking. Cigarettes.

For an increasing number of South Carolinians, the two vices over time have become as lethal as a cocked and loaded handgun.

Not to mention a big part of why heart disease, cancer, stroke and lung disease are ranked as four of the five biggest killers in the Palmetto State.

But it is what rounds out the top five that some folks might find surprising.

Because for more than a decade, accidents have been responsible for claiming large numbers of victims across Greenville County and the rest of the state.

“You aren’t just talking about traffic accidents,” said Mike Ellis, Greenville County’s chief deputy coroner. “We’re talking about everything from autoerotic asphyxia, industrial accidents and falling off a bridge to an accidental overdose.”

Under the law in South Carolina, only five manners of death are recorded – accidental, homicide, suicide, natural and undetermined.

“Every death is going to fall into one of those categories,” Ellis said.

Accidental deaths in Greenville County increased by 30 percent from 161 in 1997 to 210 in 2007, the most recent figures available through the state Department of Health and Environmental Control’s interactive data retrieval system.

Those 210 accidental deaths in Greenville County during 2007 equated to more than four times the number of suicides and nearly seven times the number of homicides that occurred that same year.

Across South Carolina that same decade, the number of accidental deaths rose by 39 percent, from 1,705 to 2,362.

The fatal accidents involved individuals who were struck by moving trains, overdosed on illegal or prescription drugs, fell from buildings, bridges or ladders, suffocated or burned in structure fires, succumbed to excessive cold or heat, shot themselves or someone else or drowned.

In the Upstate during 2007, emergency officials responded to 684 fatal accidents in Anderson, Greenville, Greenwood, Laurens, Oconee, Pickens and Spartanburg counties.

While the majority of fatal accidents involved vehicle crashes, 13 people drowned in the Upstate in 2007, including 3-year-old Joshua Dorchak, who was sailing with his dad on Lake Jocasee when a gust of wind capsized and sank their boat.

The little boy’s body was recovered two weeks later by a Greenville County Emergency Rescue Dive Team. His life jacket was still entangled in the boat’s rigging.

Not all of the drowning occurred on large bodies of water.

A 75-year-old Oconee County woman drowned while cleaning her swimming pool.

A 14-year-old Greenwood teen drowned after he and a friend were dropped off to swim at a local motel’s pool.

Two drownings that year occurred in Greenville County.

One of those cases involved a 20-year-old man whose body was found in a hot tub at the Howell Commons apartments.

Other folks, like John Luther, a business owner and engineer, died after falling about 40 feet from a roof under construction off Garlington Road.

Then there was John Wesley Holtzclaw, who was known for riding his wheelchair up and down the sidewalk along Augusta Street, until the Friday in February 2007 when he was hit in his wheelchair by an 18-wheeler pulling out of a Sunoco gas station.

Firefighters and an EMS crew jacked up the truck’s front tires, and pulled Holtzclaw free, but he died from his injuries a few hours later.

Of South Carolina’s total 39,418 deaths that occurred in 2007, 24 percent were caused by heart disease, 23 percent were caused by cancer, 6 percent were caused by stroke, 5 percent were caused by lung disease and 6 percent were caused by accidents.

It is a slice of life – and death – nearly mimicked by Greenville County, where of the total 3,559 deaths recorded that same year, 22 percent were caused by cancer, 21 percent were caused by heart disease, 6 percent were caused by stroke, 5 percent were caused by lung disease and 6 percent were caused by accidents.

Statewide, homicides accounted for slightly less than 1 percent of all deaths in 2007, while suicides equaled about 1.3 percent.

The figures were strikingly similar in Greenville County, where homicides accounted for slightly less than 1 percent of all deaths, while suicides again equaled about 1.4 percent.

The numbers tracked on accidental deaths alone are voluminous, but necessary, said Thom Berry, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Officials monitor, rank and study them each year, looking for ways they can perhaps prevent similar situations from turning deadly again.

“At the state level, everyone’s information is gathered together,” Ellis said. “That’s where the patterns begin to surface.”

In South Carolina, there are as many as 1,000 or more codes that define deaths, including several hundred specifically tied to different types of accidents.

The numbers tell a variety of stories.

Like the fact that deaths due to lung cancer in Greenville County during 2007 outnumbered deaths caused by both breast and colon cancer nearly 4 to 1.

Or that the number of homicides in Greenville County reached a 5-year high in 2007, while most places across the country were experiencing declines.

But one of the biggest stories that hasn’t changed much for more than 10 years now is that the vast majority of deaths in South Carolina stem from chronic diseases – problems that could be prevented or at the very least delayed.

Health officials said continual analysis indicates that small modifications to individual lifestyles could prevent or delay nearly 50 percent of the deaths in South Carolina annually.

Tobacco use, diet and physical activity, along with the misuse of alcohol, contribute to the largest number of deaths.

Other modifiable behaviors contributing to that 50 percent mortality are toxic substances, firearms, sexual behaviors, motor vehicle accidents and the use of illegal drugs.

By looking at preventable causes of death, rather than focusing on traditional causes, it becomes clear that prevention strategies are critically important.

“One death that could have been prevented is one too many,” Ellis said.