The World’s Deadliest Behavioral Risk Factors

By Florian Zandt – Statista

“Smoking kills” is but one of the slogans connected to anti-tobacco advocacy groups — and it’s quite true. When looking at behavioral risks, meaning types of risk that can largely be avoided, especially in highly industrialized nations, smoking cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products is connected to a variety of diseases responsible for 7.7 million deaths worldwide. As our chart with data from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington shows, no other behavioral risk factor comes close to the disease burden of smoking.

Coming in second on a global level as well as in terms of risk-factor-associated deaths in the United States in 2019 is alcohol use.