Back

A Systematic Review of Evidence Behind the CDC Guidelines for Indoor Lightning Safety

Prasad, V.; Brown, E. M.; Haslam, A.

2023-10-09 public and global health
10.1101/2023.10.05.23296621 medRxiv
Show abstract

ObjectiveTo assess the evidence underlying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indoor safety guidance for lightning storms. DesignSystematic Review of peer-reviewed literature. SettingGoogle Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science (through 2023). ParticipantsReports of indoor death or injury from lightning strike. Main outcome measuresThe number of deaths and injuries from lightning-related activities. ResultsA majority of the 15 articles identified were retrospective reviews of data from death certificates, medical records, and newspaper reports; 5 articles were based on single case reports. Reports of injuries from lightning while indoors are exceedingly rare; death from lightning while indoors is essentially non-existent in modern times. No evidence exists that supports the given advice. ConclusionsCurrent U.S. lightning avoidance tips may inadvertently portray indoor spaces as unsafe, despite their protective advantage. Guidelines should place less emphasis on indoor situations and highlight controllable risks, such as behavior in outdoor and recreation situations.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.