Investigation of Federal Bureau of Investigation Bomb-Related Death and Injury Data in the United States between 1988 and 1997

Military Medicine, Jul 2005 by Noji, Eric K, Lee, Catherine Y, Davis, Timothy, Peleg, Kobi

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. Conclusion: 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.

Introduction

Investigation of injuries from specifically terrorist and criminal explosive devices is a growing area of international study.1"3 But its study is limited due to few national and international sources of medical data to analyze. Therefore, it is critical to explore nontraditional public health data sources to better characterize statistics on morbidity and mortality. For this reason, we investigated the limitations and benefits of using federal law enforcement data that reports frequency of bombing events, in addition to death and injury statistics.

The importance of these data are its nontraditional use in the public health arena. Public health traditionally uses data such as International Classification of Diseases, Morbidity and Mortality and national health registries to abstract data.4,5 Many medical and public health audiences may be unaware that injury and death statistics are even reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Therefore, we present a descriptive analysis of this secondarily collected data and provide the reader an overview of its reported death and injury numbers.

The current study aims to report and analyze data on the types and numbers of bombing events in the United States, related injuries, and deaths between 1988 and 1997, reported by the U.S. FBI Bomb Data Center (BDC). We will discuss the usefulness of these data and identify limitations that will thwart rigorous and more extensive epidemiological analysis.

Methods

We secondarily reported FBI BDC data by examining reports of data for the years 1988 through 1997, identifying trends in annual total bombings (actual and attempted), bombing types (explosive or incendiary), and data for bomb-related injuries and deaths.

Data for the years 1988-1997 were reported solely in the 1997 FBI BDC Bulletin.6 The FBI defines a "bomb" as "the illegal possession or use of explosive material with criminal purpose, implying their use to destroy property or cause injury."6 The FBI defined "actual bombings" as the "illegal detonation or ignition of an explosive or incendiary device," including premature detonation or ignition of a device while it is being prepared, transported, or placed.6 Analysis also included the number of attempted bombings which was defined as "an unsuccessful attempt to illegally detonate or ignite an explosive or incendiary device" resulting from the malfunction or disarmament of the device before it explodes or detonates.6

Results

During 1988-1997, the FBI received reports of 17,579 actual bombings (Table I). The annual number of bombings ranged from 749 to 2,493 incidents during this time. The number of actual bombings more than doubled over the 10-year period, from 749 to 1,590 incidents (Table I and Fig. 1). The maximum number of incidents peaked at 2,493 bombings in 1992, before a 3-year decline of incidents starting in 1995.

Among the 17,579 bombings during this time, approximately 78% were caused by explosive devices and 22% from incendiary devices (Table I and Fig. 1). The FBI BDC defined "explosive bombing" as the "detonation of a device (an improvised explosive device[IED]) constructed with high or low order explosive material" such as dynamite; black, smokeless, and pyrotechnic material; or flash powder.6 The FBI defined "incendiary bombing" as pertaining to devices constructed of flammable materials creating a burning, nondetonating effect, and not consisting of high-explosive or low-explosive material.6 These are called improvised incendiary devices and sometimes consist of materials like gasoline and are commonly referred to as "fire bombs."

The percentage of explosive bombings peaked in 1995 (79.4%) and comprised an annual range of total bombings between 76.0% and 79.4% from 1988 to 1997. Incendiary bombings peaked early in the study, in 1989, and comprised 24.1% of bombings that year. Incendiary bombings ranged between 20.8% and 24.1% during the 10-year study period. In addition, the FBI BDC reported 5,129 attempted bombings between 1988 and 1997. More than one-half of these attempts occurred during the final 4 years between 1994 and 1997 (2,627, 51.2%). There were more attempted bombings using incendiary devices than among actual bombings, approximately 27% incendiary and 73% explosive.