Don't Die Early

Wearing a seat belt in the front seat cuts your chance of being killed in a crash by about half. In the front seat of a light truck, it cuts it by about 60%. Of the people who died in vehicles in the US in 2022, among those whose belt use is known, half were not wearing one.

Wearing a helmet with the strap buckled makes a motorcycle rider about 40% less likely to die in a crash, and about 70% less likely to suffer a head injury. The strap has to be fastened tight; a helmet sitting loosely on your head does not count as wearing one.

One working smoke alarm can cut your chance of dying in a home fire by about 60%. When a fire starts, about 40% of people are asleep, and your nose alone will not wake you. If you burn coal or use gas indoors in winter, add a carbon monoxide alarm. In China in 2018, 11,500 people died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and in the three winter months about 70% of them died at home.

A compliant hose costs a few tens of yuan. Replacing it when it expires is a user obligation written into the Regulations on the Administration of Urban Gas (城镇燃气管理条例). Modifying the pipes or removing the gas meter yourself is expressly prohibited by these regulations. The same regulations also say that the gas company cannot require you to buy the products and services it designates. A door-to-door pitch that says you “must replace” something can simply be turned away.

In 2025 alone, there were 828 mushroom poisoning incidents nationwide, with 2165 people poisoned and 13 dead. That year, 34 species of mushroom that had never before been recorded poisoning people were newly identified. Testing with a silver needle, the idea that a mushroom insects have eaten is not poisonous, the idea that only brightly colored ones are poisonous: none of these claims holds up.

Wheeling an e-bike into the building corridor or into the elevator, or charging it at home, is expressly prohibited by the Ministry of Emergency Management's Provisions on Fire Safety Management of High-Rise Civil Buildings (高层民用建筑消防安全管理规定). If you do not correct it, an individual is fined 500 to 1000 yuan and a business 2000 to 10000 yuan. The fine is the small part; what matters is that this kind of fire burns right in your only escape route.

For every 10 mmHg drop in blood pressure, the chance of a major cardiovascular problem falls by about 20%, stroke by 27%, heart failure by 28%, and the chance of death by 13%. Among people aged 35 to 75 in China, 44.7% have high blood pressure, and only 7.2% truly have it under control.

For a few tens of yuan and one tube of blood, you can find prediabetes while you have no symptoms at all. The official US screening recommendation is: people aged 35 to 70 who are overweight or obese should get tested. Those whose results are normal should retest every three years. The US counts a body mass index of 25 as overweight, relaxed to 23 for people of Asian descent; the Chinese standard counts 24 as overweight.

For every 1% rise in average speed, the chance of a crash that kills someone rises by about 4%. With alcohol there is no “a little is fine” safe line. While the alcohol concentration in your blood is still very low, the risk is already starting to climb.

Using a safety seat for babies under one year old lowers their chance of fatal injury in a crash by about 70%. For children aged 1 to 4, by about half. Holding them in your arms has no such effect; when the car brakes hard, you cannot hold on to them.

A set of restrictors costs a few tens of yuan. New York City installed window guards free for high-risk households and sent people to their homes to explain them; in one borough, reported child falls fell by half in three years. Later New York went all the way and passed a law requiring landlords to install guards in homes where young children live. A window screen gives way with one push and does not count as protection.

If you fall into the water wearing a life jacket, your chance of drowning is only about half that of someone not wearing one. Drowning is still the leading cause of death for children aged 1 to 14 in China. The drowning death rate in rural areas is about twice that in cities.

Balance training two or three times a week, such as tai chi, lowers the number of falls in older people by about 23%, and the number of people who fall by 15%. Making the home slip-resistant and installing grab bars lowers it by about another 20%. In China, falls are the leading cause of injury death among people 65 and over, and more than half of falls happen right in their own homes.

The test costs a few tens of yuan. In the Qidong trial, which followed people for 30 years, those vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth were later 84% less likely to get primary liver cancer, and 72% less likely to be carrying the hepatitis B virus. Adults found to have no antibodies should catch up with three doses, finished within six months, for one or two hundred yuan.

Once tetanus sets in, about 1 in every 10 people die. Deep wounds and wounds with soil in them carry the highest risk. If the wound is dirty and it has been 5 years or more since your last shot, you need 1 booster. Treating it the same day costs no more than a few tens of yuan; don't wait until the wound swells up.

In Swedish data on 1,670,000 women, those who got the HPV vaccine before age 17 were later only about one-eighth as likely to get invasive cervical cancer as those who were not vaccinated. Those who got it only at 17 to 30 were still at only about half the risk. So the earlier you get it, the more it is worth.

A mammogram every two years for women aged 40 to 74 is explicitly recommended in the official US screening recommendation. For women 75 and over, and for adding ultrasound or MRI for dense breasts, the official conclusion is that the evidence is not yet sufficient. When a checkup package charges extra for these, you can skip them.

In the trial in rural India, women who had only a single HPV test in their lives were about half as likely to die of cervical cancer, and about 50% less likely to be diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer. One test costs one or two hundred yuan, and a negative result covers you for 5 years.

A stool test for hidden blood that costs a few tens of yuan, done every year or two, lowers the chance of dying of colorectal cancer by about 16%, and by 25% for people who have done at least one round. For people invited to have one colonoscopy, the chance of getting colorectal cancer over the next ten years fell from 1.20% to 0.98%.

In the trial of flu shots after a heart attack, the share who died within a year fell from 4.9% to 2.9%. People with cardiovascular disease and older people should get one shot every autumn, for 50 to 150 yuan.

In the Phase III trial, this vaccine prevented 97% of shingles cases, and it was about the same in every age group. The downside is that the two doses cost three to four thousand yuan, all out of pocket. What that money buys is a 97% drop in incidence.

In a trial of 84,500 older people, the 13-valent pneumococcal vaccine blocked about 46% of pneumonia from the few types the vaccine covers, and blocked 75% of invasive infections, the most dangerous kind. But it showed no effect on “pneumonia from all causes”, so don't count on it to prevent all pneumonia.

In the trial in Linqu, Shandong, which followed people for 22 years, people whose Helicobacter pylori was eradicated were about half as likely to get stomach cancer later, and about 40% less likely to die of stomach cancer. One test costs one or two hundred yuan; eradication takes two weeks of medicine.

Eligible heavy smokers who get a low-dose CT once a year are 20% less likely to die of lung cancer than those who only get a chest X-ray, and 6.7% less likely to die overall. The price is follow-up tests after a suspicious result, and the anxiety of that stretch of time.

Taking things that can kill out of easy reach: the evidence for measures like this keeps getting stronger. After painkillers were controlled, related suicides fell 43%; at places where people often jump, putting up barriers cut them by 86%. So don't stockpile sleeping pills or pesticides at home. When things feel unbearable, call 12356 first; it works nationwide and is open at least 18 hours a day.

The fire extinguisher, fire blanket, escape mask and first-aid kit are all on the Ministry of Emergency Management's list of 11 household emergency items. A set costs a few hundred yuan, and you buy it once. In the studies that gave home safety guidance in people's homes, the injury rate was about a quarter lower.

When someone over 60 has one episode of blood in the urine that can be seen with the naked eye, the chance it turns out to be bladder cancer is about 2.8%; at 40 to 59 it is about 1.2%. That is not a high number, but it is high enough that you must get checked once. Get checked even if the bleeding has stopped by the next day.

Men with erectile dysfunction later get cardiovascular disease about 40% more often than other men, and heart attacks about 60% more often. The younger the man, the bigger the gap. This problem often shows up before chest pain does. So first get your blood pressure, blood sugar and blood lipids checked; don't buy drugs on your own to cover it up.

Get your cardiovascular risk factors under control and erectile function itself improves. On a questionnaire score, the average gain is 2 to 3 points. The questionnaire's total is 25 points, and 22 or more counts as normal.

Wearing one every time, from start to finish, lowers the chance of HIV passing between a man and a woman by roughly 70% or more. Wearing one “most of the time” works little better than not wearing one. It blocks syphilis, gonorrhea and the like as well.

Getting tested for HIV at the CDC costs nothing. Without your consent, no organization or individual may make public your name, address, workplace or medical history. A positive result is not a death sentence either: people who keep taking their medication and push the virus down to undetectable levels do not pass it on to their sexual partners. That study followed more than 700 couples through more than 70,000 acts of sex without a condom, and transmission between partners was zero.

Nearly half of people who attempted suicide say no more than 10 minutes passed between the thought appearing and acting on it, so what has to be gotten through is often just these few dozen minutes. Three quarters had contact with people around them during that time; they just didn't speak up. Among people who have been to the hospital for self-harm, after 1 year about 2% have died by suicide, and after 9 years or more about 7%; the great majority do not later die by suicide.

Paraquat has no antidote, and more than 40% of people who drink it cannot be saved. It inflames the lungs and slowly makes them stiffen, and the kidneys and liver are injured along with them. Of people saved after gas poisoning, nearly half have brains that work worse than before six weeks later; even among those given hyperbaric oxygen, a quarter still do.

Of people admitted to a trauma ICU after falling from a height, only 5.5% died, but their injuries were severe and their treatment long. Nearly half injured three or more body regions at once, more than a third were put on a ventilator, and the longest ICU stay was 132 days. Half of them fell from no higher than 3 meters. Of the badly injured, under 60% were able to go back to work later.

Among regular donors, who are screened at every stage before donating and have someone checking on them after, 31 in 10,000 had reached uremia 15 years later, against 4 in 10,000 among equally healthy people who did not donate. People who sell a kidney get neither screening nor follow-up checks; 6 years later, 86% say their health has gotten worse, and three quarters are still in debt.

Radiation has no smell, color or temperature, and most radioactive sources are just an ordinary piece of metal, so “it looks fine” cannot be your judgment. The chance of an ordinary person running into one is extremely low: each year there is under 1 accident per 10,000 sources. But once you do run into one, it cannot be undone: in Brazil in 1987, someone took apart a radiotherapy machine from an abandoned clinic as scrap metal, and in the end 4 people died.

Among people who have been seen at a hospital for a gambling problem, death by suicide is 15 times that of people the same age, and death from any cause is 1.8 times. The warning sign that can show in advance who will die by suicide is depression. So if you are gambling to the point of borrowing to pay gambling debts, and your mood stays low, call 12356 first.

People who are not yet infected take an antiviral drug in advance; this is called pre-exposure prophylaxis. People who take it on schedule can cut their risk of infection by more than 70%. People who take it on and off get basically no effect. It is a prescription drug: you first get checked at a hospital before it is prescribed, and then go back for regular rechecks.

Women 65 or older, and postmenopausal women with risk factors for osteoporosis, should get their bone density checked once. Assessing risk first and then giving drugs to those at high risk lowers hip fractures by about 17%. Converted, for every 1000 people who get checked, about 5 fewer have a hip fracture. No change in all-cause mortality was seen.

For people already diagnosed with osteoporosis, or who have broken a bone in a minor fall, taking medication as the doctor plans can cut hip fractures by about half, and spine fractures by more than half. Older people who started a once-a-year infusion after hip fracture surgery had about 35% fewer new fractures over two years. Calcium supplements alone cannot replace these drugs.

The official position in China is that ice must be 15 cm thick before adults can go on it to skate. In the US and Canada the floor is 10 cm, and that counts only new, clear ice. White ice is only half as strong, so the thickness has to be doubled. On the same sheet of ice, it may be a foot thick here and only an inch or two a few steps away, so measure as you go.

An angle grinder spins extremely fast; if the disc breaks, pieces fly out and injure people, and with a woodworking saw blade fitted it can also suddenly kick back. Two accidents in China both involved a saw blade fitted and no guard: one person severed a thigh artery and one cut open a carotid artery, and neither could be saved. A guard, goggles plus a face shield, and holding it steady with both hands: these cost very little.

The fear that mentioning suicide will draw the idea out was not seen in the research. When suicide questions were added to questionnaires for secondary school students, those who were asked were not more distressed, and the number thinking about suicide did not go up. Children who were already depressed were actually less distressed after being asked, and children who had attempted suicide actually thought about suicide somewhat less.