Posted for the record, in anticipation of the media attempting to explain away the unprecedented number of heart attacks this winter as being “in the normal, because people are shoveling snow”.
As winter arrives, it’s worth noting that each year about 11,500 people in the United States are treated in emergency rooms for injuries related to snow shoveling. On average, 100 of those injuries are fatal, generally heart attacks. The data, compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and analyzed a few years ago by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, indicates that soft tissue injuries are the most common (55 percent), followed by lacerations (16 percent), fractures (7 percent) and heart-related injuries (7 percent). In the 17-year span of the data, however, cardiovascular injuries accounted for half of the hospitalizations and 100 percent of the fatalities.
And obviously, the number of fatalities related to snow shoveling should be on the low side, due to all that global warming of which we hear so much.