Persistence of choking injuries in children
Cited in 3 Likelier entries (3 risks, 0 decisions).
Used in 3 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
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- Statistic
2,347 US pediatric choking deaths (ages 0-19) and 305,814 nonfatal injuries, 2001-2016; 75% of fatalities in children under 5; fatality rate in under-5 unchanged after 2010 AAP recommendations
“"From 2001 to 2016, there were a total of 305,814 nonfatal injuries and 2347 choking deaths in children from 0 to 19 years. [...] Children under five years of age accounted for 73% of nonfatal injuries and 75% of choking fatalities. [...] a decrease in the choking fatalities rate in all children (0.18/100,000 versus 0.16/100,000, respectively) but no change in fatalities rate for children under five."”
Calculation notes
2347 deaths / 16 years ≈ 147 pediatric choking deaths per year across ages 0-19. 75% × 147 ≈ 110 deaths per year in children under 5 from all foreign-body choking (W79 food + W80 other). Applying the ~41-50% food share from the MMWR/WISQARS breakdown gives roughly 50-75 food-choking deaths per year among US children 0-4. This anchors the native "~50-80 per year" figure. Sideris et al. also document that the under-5 rate did not improve after the 2010 AAP policy statement, which is the empirical basis for treating this as a "calibrated" rather than "debunked" fear.
Independence note: Both Chapin and Sideris draw from CPSC's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) and NCHS mortality files, so their denominators are methodologically linked. Treated as two views of the same underlying data rather than fully independent estimates.
Source date: 2021-04-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-12
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- Statistic
2,347 US pediatric choking deaths (ages 0-19) and 305,814 nonfatal injuries, 2001-2016; 75% of fatalities in children under 5; overall fatality rate 0.16 per 100,000 with no change in under-5 rate
“"From 2001 to 2016, there were a total of 305,814 nonfatal injuries and 2347 choking deaths in children from 0 to 19 years. [...] Children under five years of age accounted for 73% of nonfatal injuries and 75% of choking fatalities. [...] a decrease in the choking fatalities rate in all children (0.18/100,000 versus 0.16/100,000, respectively) but no change in fatalities rate for children under five."”
Calculation notes
2347 deaths / 16 years ≈ 147 pediatric choking deaths per year across ages 0-19; 75% × 147 ≈ 110 deaths per year in children under 5 from all foreign-body choking (W79 food + W80 non-food). Applying the ~41% food share from the CDC MMWR breakdown gives roughly 45-70 food-choking deaths per year among US children 0-4, consistent with the ~50-80 band used to derive the normalized ~2e-5 fatal rate. Sideris also documents that the under-5 fatality rate did not improve after the 2010 AAP policy statement — the empirical basis for treating this as a calibrated fear.
Source date: 2021-04-01 · Accessed: 2026-07-10
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- Statistic
2,347 US pediatric choking deaths (ages 0-19) and 305,814 nonfatal injuries, 2001-2016; 75% of fatalities in children under 5; under-5 fatality rate unchanged after the 2010 AAP recommendations
“"From 2001 to 2016, there were a total of 305,814 nonfatal injuries and 2347 choking deaths in children from 0 to 19 years. [...] Children under five years of age accounted for 73% of nonfatal injuries and 75% of choking fatalities. [...] a decrease in the choking fatalities rate in all children (0.18/100,000 versus 0.16/100,000, respectively) but no change in fatalities rate for children under five."”
Calculation notes
Anchors the all-food baseline the grape share is applied to. 2347 deaths / 16 years ≈ 147 pediatric choking deaths per year (ages 0-19); 75% × 147 ≈ 110 under-5 deaths per year from all foreign-body choking, and the food subset (~41-50%) lands the all-food child-choking death rate near 1 in 50,000 over the 0-4 window — the figure carried in Likelier's toddler-choking-while-eating entry. The flat under-5 rate is why child-choking vigilance is treated as calibrated rather than debunked.
Independence note: Draws from CPSC NEISS and NCHS mortality files — methodologically linked to Chapin 2013 and the CDC surveillance briefs; treat those as views of one pipeline. Does not break fatalities down by food type, so it sets the base rate, not the grape share.
Source date: 2021-04-01 · Accessed: 2026-08-16
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