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Show Keeping Up Vtiene JMervfce Science Sorvlco. WN'U Service. Accidents Kill More Young Than Three Diseases Auto Crashes Lead in List of Fatalities Washington. More than twice as many children under IS years are killed by accidents as by three common communicable communi-cable diseases, measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria. This fact emerges in a study of fatal childhood accidents which has been undertaken by the U. S. Public Health Service here. First section of the study relating to automobile accidents, has just been reported by William M. Gafafer, senior statistician stat-istician of the- federal health service. For children under one year of age mechanical suffocation leads the list of fatal accidents. At one and two years burns caused most fatal accidents. Automobile accidents acci-dents and burns lead at three years. The Dangerous Age. At four years and from then up to fifteen years, automobile accidents acci-dents rank first as cause of accidental acci-dental deaths and also outnumber deaths from the three diseases, measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria. diph-theria. The study was limited to the year 1930, the most recent year for which accurate population enumerations enumer-ations exist. Mr. Gafafer divided the country into three geographic regions, Northeastern, North Central, Southeastern South-eastern and Western, and reviewed the fatality figures region by region. The Northeastern region had most childhood automobile deaths per hundred thousand children. Next greatest number was found in the Western region. Then followed the North Central and finally the Southeastern South-eastern with fewest deaths per hundred hun-dred thousand children. |