Investigation of Federal Bureau of Investigation bomb-related death and injury data in the United States between 1988 and 1997.
OBJECTIVE
The study of physical injury from terrorist explosives is an increasing international area of research. However, there are few data sets to characterize the scope of injury and death from these devices. Therefore, one option is to begin evaluating statistics reported by a nontraditional public health data source, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Bomb Data Center.


METHODS
We reviewed data reported by the FBI Bomb Data Center for the years 1988-1997 and analyzed the number of bomb-related deaths and injuries and incidence of bombings.


RESULTS
The FBI reported 17,579 bombings, 427 related deaths, and 4,063 injuries in the United States between 1988 and 1997. The benefits of this data are reporting of information not normally found in public health data, including type of explosive device and explosive composition. The primary limitations include lack of case comparison and unknown methods of data reporting and data collection.


CONCLUSIONS
To completely study physical injury from explosive devices requires a systematic and comprehensive data set. The FBI data provides an interesting statistical resource to assess the scope of injury from bombs in the United States, but at the current time cannot be used for extensive epidemiological analysis.
Noji
Eric K
EK
Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Hubert Humphrey Building, Room 719-B, Washington, DC 20201, USA.
Lee
Catherine Y
CY
Davis
Timothy
T
Peleg
Kobi
K
D001753:Blast Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D005107:Explosions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D035846:Law Enforcement; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D023481:Terrorism / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D037041:United States Government Agencies