MAP: What’s Most Likely to Kill You

While we search for the safest (and, in turn, most dangerous) towns in Connecticut, it’s worth looking at what is most likely to kill someone in a community before their time.

Using records maintained by the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH), the interactive map above shows the most listed cause of death for residents under 75 in each town between 2006 and 2010, as well as the percent of total deaths for the same range.

The records take into account all illnesses, diseases (infectious and parasitic), genetic conditions, viruses, accidents (motor vehicle accidents, falls, drowning, exposure, etc.), homicides (and suicide) and injuries (firearms, drugs and alcohol poisoning, etc.).

Cancer (malignant neoplasms) and heart disease are overwhelmingly the main causes of death for residents under 75, together making up more than three-quarters of the 20,745 deaths (under 75) in Connecticut between 2006 and 2010.

Heart disease was the main cause of death for 95 of the 169 towns in the state, however there were slightly more cancer cases total (7,995 to 7,879).

The two ailments were related to the same number of deaths in eight communities.

One town had an alternate leading cause: Roxbury, which had six deaths due to injury — four related to poisoning and drug use.

Visit the DPH website on mortality statistics to download the full report for each town. (Also broken down by sex.)

The map above also shows the Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL), used to calculate this week’s ranking of 17 Towns Where You’re Most Likely to Die Early.

Learn more about the YPLL metric and how it fits into Patch’s ultimate ranking of Connecticut’s safest and most dangerous towns.