Talk:Micromort

Disambig

Is the disambig really necessary? There isn't yet an article for the software —3mta3 (talk) 10:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You're right. Until there is a stub article for the software, there is not point having a dismbig page, and much less point in incorrectly calling this article a disambiguation page. The removed text is below, to be put on a disambig page when it's needed:

Micromort may refer to:

• Micromort, a unit of risk measuring a one-in-a-million probability of death.
• "MICROMORT", a computer program (by Heisey and Fuller, 1985) used to estimate mortality rates, commonly used in ecological studies.

MartinPoulter (talk) 11:19, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

What, no unrelated reference to "Mort" by Terry Pratchert, who takes on the mantle of death for a short time? (by: anon 09-Jul 2024 12:00) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.55.54.41 (talk) 18:54, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

30 micromorts per day calculation

If the average person experiences one death per 30,000 days shouldn't that be 0.03 micromorts per day, or 30 millimorts, rather than 30 micromorts, per day? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.236.250.103 (talk) 22:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

• okay; one million micromorts per 30000 days, div both sides by 1000 to get 1000 micromorts per 30 days, 100 micromorts per 3 days. 65.46.169.246 (talk) 22:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Examples should include per day

Currently the examples of how many micromort certain things are do not include the time during which is should happen. 0.5 liter of wine nicely split over 7 days is not associated with mortality. 0.5 liter in 0.5 hour is something else EgonWillighagen (talk) 19:55, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Examples need better citations

Providing a link to a slide with no further references is OK, but it doesn't quote sources. RedHab (talk) 20:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Technology Review article used as source for micromort counts

The article that most of the micromort totals are drawn from was published in February 1979, and for some unknown reason (assuming good faith) the editor who added the reference didn't include the publication date, but only the access date. The pollution-related totals are thus totally meaningless 32 years later, and some recent studies have shown some of these activities to be beneficial to health rather than death-causing (in particular, 500mL of wine a day). To add to the unreliability of this source, the author, Richard Wilson, does not appear to have done any actual statistical analysis to arrive at these figures. Rather, he implicitly assumes a causal relationship between some activity and some cause of death, and divides the number of people who die from that cause of death by the number of times the activity is engaged in. For obvious reasons this is not a valid analysis of the conditional probability of death given participation in the activity. Miraculouschaos (talk) 04:51, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

At work section?

This is a good BBC article which could be used to give an indication of micromorts at work according to occupation and country. The article should at least touch upon the subject.Malick78 (talk) 19:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Suggested improvements

David Spiegelhalter is suggesting these improvements - partly to distinguish the Micromort from the Microlife

• a little additional explanation that deaths can be broken into 'non-natural - accidents and violence', and 'natural causes'
• when discussing acute risk factors, can use MicroMorts for the former.
• give expanded table based on our spreadsheet, with column making clear the context. I think this could be quite big, and would allow people to add to it - better than us having to police it! Also could include multiple data-sources about the same thing.
• Chronic risk factors that may hasten deaths from natural causes have been expressed in terms of micromorts (give some examples from current table?) but have also been expressed in terms of microlives (link)
• I think the dollar discussion should be shifted to the end, and could be added to.
• Also needs a paragraph saying we are using historical rates to estimate underlying risks - does not necessarily apply to an individual in a new situation, but could provide a ballpark figure.

Gmp26 (talk) 11:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

All the radiation examples rely on the linear-no-threshold theory of radiation induced cancer. The World Health Organization recently deprecated the practice of calculating cancer risk this way, so all these results are almost certainly misleading and wrong. Perhaps we should stick with risks that are actually measured rather than inferred from a known-incorrect model. Here is what the Health Physics Society has to say about using LNT in the way this article does in every case about cancer risk:

"In accordance with current knowledge of radiation health risks, the Health Physics Society recommends against quantitative estimation of health risks below an individual dose of 5 rem in one year or a lifetime dose of 10 rem above that received from natural sources. Doses from natural background radiation in the United States average about 0.3 rem per year. A dose of 5 rem will be accumulated in the first 17 years of life and about 25 rem in a lifetime of 80 years. Estimation of health risk associated with radiation doses that are of similar magnitude as those received from natural sources should be strictly qualitative and encompass a range of hypothetical health outcomes, including the possibility of no adverse health effects at such low levels. There is substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks following high-dose exposures. However, below 5–10 rem (which includes occupational and environmental exposures), risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are nonexistent." http://www.hps.org/documents/radiationrisk.pdf

Cuhlik (talk) 00:14, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I've just heard a clip from this radio prog http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02x7h0z and I'm sure David Spiegelhalter said at about 20min in that the "mort" is a unit of acute risk, and therefore should only be applied to events that have the potential to kill you outright and on the spot. So behaviours that accumulate risk, such as eating pork pies or smoking should not be measured in micromorts; he uses the microlife unit for such things.

Should the article mention this and clarify the difference?

JBel (talk) 18:06, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Everest stats misleading

The source divides total deaths among successful ascents. But the deaths are not necessarily from successful ascents. It should be deaths per attempt, successful or otherwise. All deaths on successful ascents must happen on the way down, and it is highly unlikely that the total deaths are only counting summiters. Allangmiller (talk) 10:29, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Indoor climbing

Does anyone have figures for indoor climbing (as opposed to mountaineering)? The nearest I can find is this citing this paper, which suggests a really low figure. But is that figure statistically sound, given how rare an event a one-in-a-million chance is? Clearly, the risk cannot be zero. Does anyone here have the relevant knowledge to work out what we can tell from these results using, say, a Bayesian framework? The Anome (talk) 18:28, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Note: the above now expanded and cc'd to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. -- The Anome (talk) 18:43, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Marathoning

The 7 micromort number is perhaps inaccurate. It seems that this value is based off of hyponatraemia deaths and only from the London Marathon.

There is another study looking at cardiac arrest deaths from 2000 to 2010 across almost 4 million marathon participants. If I understand correctly, cardiac arrest is a more broad category of race-based deaths that seems to be most common

The New England Of Journal Study table 1 seems to indicate that the micromorts based on cardiac arrest for over 3 million marathon participants between 2000 and 2010 is 1.01/100000 (10.1 micromort)

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Suggest Removing Source "Understanding Uncertainty"

Steven Wright suggests depreciating "Understanding Uncertainty" as it requires flash to view & has broken links. It is cited in three of the examples, 2 of which already have another figure & source.

During the course of some research I came upon this document that might be useful. , see table 1.

66.193.95.18 (talk) 13:54, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Edit Request

Steven Wright thinks the Chronic Risk section could be improved but am not an expert in this domain. He proposes the following:

• move the list of 1 micromort events/activities under a subhead
• make it clearer that the list is 1 micromort events
• explain why micromorts aren't appropriate for chronic risks

Here is a diff (red delete, green add):

Extended content

Micromorts are best used to measure the size of acute risks, i.e. immediate deaths. Risks from lifestyle, exposure to air pollution and so on are chronic risks, in that they do not kill straight away, but reduce life expectancy. Ron Howard included such risks in his original 1979 work, for example an additional one micromort from …

Micromorts are best used to measure the size of acute risks, i.e. the risk of immediate death. More precisely, micromorts attribute the same amount of risk to each event independently and don't take into account that the risks associated with each event can be interrelated. A related measure, microlives, are more appropriate for expressing the effect lifestyle or chronic risks, e.g. air pollution or regular exercise, have on life expectancy.

Sample Values

Chronic or lifestyle activities that death risk by roughly one micromort per event:…

• Drinking 0.5 liter of wine (cirrhosis of the liver)
• Smoking 1.4 cigarettes (cancer, heart disease)
• Spending 1 hour in a coal mine (black lung disease)
• Spending 3 hours in a coal mine (accident)
• Living 2 days in New York or Boston in 1979 (air pollution)
• Living 2 months with a smoker (cancer, heart disease)
• Drinking Miami water for 1 year (cancer from chloroform)
• Eating 100 charcoal-broiled steaks (cancer from benzopyrene)
• Traveling 6000 miles (10,000 km) by jet (cancer due to increased background radiation)

Such risks are better expressed using the related concept of a microlife.

66.193.95.18 (talk) 15:15, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

References

I'm not familiar with Steven Wright, his relationship to the article's subject, nor his relationship to the IP editor suggesting these edits. I am familiar with the need for the IP editor to disclose the nature of their COI (specifically, whether or not they are being paid to suggest these edits, and if so, by whom). When ready to proceed with the requested information, kindly change the {{request edit}} template's answer parameter to read from |ans=yes to |ans=no. Thank you!
Regards,  Spintendo  17:24, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

More UK stats

If anyone is interested, here are some micromort numbers broken down by road and vehicle type in the UK in 2024. Based on: UK 2024 traffic statistics and UK collision analysis tool (statistics) Here is the Wikipedia-formatted table:

Road Safety Statistics by Road Type and Vehicle Type (2024)

Road Type	Vehicle Type	Fatal Injury Count	Serious Injury Count	2024 Billion Vehicle Miles	Miles per Micromort	Km per Micromort	M-miles per serious Injury
'A' Road	Buses and Coaches	17.00	323.29	0.90	52.94	85.20	2.78
'A' Road	Cars and Taxis	543.00	6557.34	111.60	205.52	330.76	17.02
'A' Road	Heavy Goods Vehicles	42.00	111.54	7.60	180.95	291.21	68.14
'A' Road	Light Commercial Vehicles	38.00	424.86	24.40	642.11	1033.37	57.43
'A' Road	Motorcycles	210.00	2824.25	1.10	5.24	8.43	0.39
Minor Road	Buses and Coaches	12.00	244.09	0.90	75.00	120.70	3.69
Minor Road	Cars and Taxis	357.00	8282.41	91.20	255.46	411.13	11.01
Minor Road	Heavy Goods Vehicles	5.00	72.76	1.30	260.00	418.43	17.87
Minor Road	Light Commercial Vehicles	24.00	493.22	20.40	850.00	1367.94	41.36
Minor Road	Motorcycles	143.00	2831.43	1.50	10.49	16.88	0.53
Motorway	Buses and Coaches	0.00	6.11	0.20			32.74
Motorway	Cars and Taxis	66.00	638.77	48.50	734.85	1182.62	75.93
Motorway	Heavy Goods Vehicles	13.00	33.41	8.10	623.08	1002.74	242.42
Motorway	Light Commercial Vehicles	6.00	58.81	13.00	2166.67	3486.90	221.04
Motorway	Motorcycles	5.00	91.69	0.20	40.00	64.37	2.18

I'm particularly curious of Motorcycle safety, and it's notable that it seems motorcycle fatalities are about the same order-of-magnitude as car serious-injury rates. A-roads (minor highways) are overwhelmingly dangerous in this analysis. They combine high speeds (80kph+) with complex road geometries and hazards that don't appear on motorways (blind corners, intersections, driveways, animals, lack of barrier for oncoming traffic).

Serious Injury can be summarized as an injury that requires hospitalization (broken bones, deep cuts, concussion, or worse)

another good read is speed compliance stats, which shows motorcycles are most likely to exceed speed limits and as per ras07 speed is a contributing factor in 59% of fatal collisions.

As per RAS0502 motorcycles seem to be 10x as likely to get in any collision per km as cars, (and through algebra of above) any collision is 4x as likely to be fatal.

Branowl (talk) 18:53, 23 April 2026 (UTC)