Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are dominating mortality rates statistics globally and also are responsible for the majority of deaths in developed countries.

Deaths caused by infectious diseases, malnutrition, neonatal and maternal mortality are common and, in some cases, predominant in developing countries. However, in developed countries the percentage of deaths caused by this is very low.  

Totally, noncommunicable diseases reaching more than 73% of global deaths.

There are several dominant death risk factors: in particular, healthy nutrition and lifestyle factors (including blood pressure, physical activity, body mass index, blood sugar level and diet), smoking, air pollution (both outdoors and in enclosed spaces), environmental factors (including clean water and sanitation) and safe sex (for HIV/AIDS prevention).

Dominating causes of death among animals are diseases caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites. Wild animals are not affected by chronic diseases, cardiovascular diseases or cancer, the level of these in normal natural habitat conditions tends to zero. However, scientists have noticed that constant presence of organic pollutants in wild animals’ habitat causes them to develop diseases from bone fragility to diabetes and cancer.

Since most organic pollutants accumulate in adipose tissue and hardly degrade, they can travel great distances. Most organic pollutants are carcinogens or possibly carcinogenic, and they all ending up at the top of the food chain, inside predators’ and humans’ bodies.

Links:

https://actavetscand.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13028-017-0353-5

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death#estimating-the-causes-of-death

Dietz R, Outridge PM, Hobson KA. Anthropogenic contribution to mercury levels in present-day Arctic animals—a review. Sci Total Environ. 2009;407:6120–31.

AMAP. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme: AMAP assessment 2002—persistent organic pollutants in the Arctic 2004; Oslo 2004.