DEATH RATES OF CHARACTERS IN SOAP-OPERA ON BRITISH TELEVISION - IS A GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING REQUIRED

Objective: To measure mortality among characters in British soap opera s on television, Design: Cohort analysis of deaths in EastEnders and C oronation Street, supplemented by an analysis of deaths in Brookside a nd Emmerdale. Main outcome measures: Standardised mortality ratios and the proportional mortality ratio for deaths attributable to external causes (E code of ICD-9 (international classification of diseases, nin th revision), Results: Staying alive in a television soap opera is not easy, Standardised mortality ratios for characters were among the hig hest for any occupation yet described (771 (95% confidence interval 41 5 to 1127) for characters in EastEnders), and this was not just becaus e all causes of death were overrepresented, Deaths in soap operas were almost three times more likely to be from violent causes than would b e expected from a character's age and sex, A character in EastEnders w as twice as likely as a similar character in Coronation Street to die during an episode, Conclusions: The most dangerous job in the United K ingdom is not, as expected, bomb disposal expert, steeplejack, or Form ula One racing driver but having a role in one of the United Kingdom's most well known soap operas, This is the first quantitative estimate of the size of tile pinch of salt which should be taken when watching soap operas.