Search NIOSH  |  NIOSH Home  |  NIOSH Topics  |  Site Index  |  Databases and Information Resources  |  NIOSH Products  |  Contact Us

National Occupational Respiratory Mortality System — Note to Users

NIOSH may periodically revise NORMS and its associated query pages to maintain relevancy and currency of content.   Users should be aware that these modifications may result in different output being generated and should consult the system history to obtain an understanding of changes and their implications.   Comments concerning suggested improvements are welcomed.   Please send comments and suggestions to the WoRLD e-mail address listed at the bottom of the Occupational Respiratory Disease Surveillance (ORDS) Home Page.

The data generated by NORMS are in the public domain and may be used without special permission; citation of the source, however is appreciated.

NIOSH [ year ].  National Occupational Respiratory Mortality System (NORMS).  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Division of Respiratory Disease Studies, Surveillance Branch.  <http://webappa.cdc.gov/ords/norms.html>  Date accessed, _____.

NORMS was originally posted in July, 2004.

The following revisions were posted on March 22, 2006:
1. Death counts based on the "Multiple Cause" option include the number of decedents with any mention of the selected diseases on the entity axis code field in all data years.   "Contributing Cause" is the number of decedents with any mention of the selected diseases on the entity axis code field that are not coded as the "Underlying Cause."   [Previously, death counts due to diseases in (pre-ICD-10) data years 1968-1998 included the number of decedents with any mention of the selected disease on the record axis code field.]
2. Crude death rates and age-adjusted death rates generated prior to this date for data year 2000 may have changed.  [Previously, population estimates in data year 2000 did not include American Indian or Alaska Native females.  This was due to an error in the algorithm used to generate these population estimates, which has been corrected.]  Please note that the standard population distributions for year 2000 are not affected by the change in population estimates.
3. The National  Database includes an option to count the number of decedents with unknown age at time of death. [Previously, death counts were restricted to decedents of known ages,15 years and older.]
4. The term "mortality rate" has been replaced with the term "death rate."  Death rates are typically based on mid-year population denominators, while mortality rate denominators are typically not population-based.  Refer to the NCHS definition of rates for additional information.

The following revisions were posted on August 18, 2008:
1. Proportionate mortality ratios for underlying cause-of-death data generated prior to this date may have changed.  [Previously, ICD-9 codes for the pneumoconioses and some ICD-9 codes for COPD, pneumonia, and tuberculosis were not included.  This was due to an error in the algorithm used to generate these statistics, which has been corrected.]
2. Deaths with J65 (Pneumoconiosis associated with tuberculosis) coded as a cause of death on the entity axis are included in the entity axis multiple cause-of-death tabulations for code J64 (Unspecified Pneumoconiosis) and codes A16, A19, or B90.9 (collectively defined as "Respiratory Tuberculosis").   [Previously, these deaths were not counted.]

 

NORMS

Glossary