Even moderately hot weather may actually be killing thousands, not hundreds as previously reported.
Even moderately hot weather may actually be killing thousands, not hundreds as previously reported. This summer, COVID-19 may make it harder to stay cool.
As temperatures rise this summer, a new study by University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health (UBC SPPH) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers finds that thousands of U.S. deaths may be attributable to heat each year, far more than the 600 deaths previously estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Published in the journal Environmental Epidemiology, the study estimates that heat contributed to the deaths of 5,600 people each year on average between 1997 and 2006 in 297 counties comprising three-fifths of the U.S. population.
Most of these deaths were from only moderately hot weather, rather than extremely hot weather—categories that the researchers defined not by temperature, but by what temperatures are normal for a given region of the U.S.
Read more at University of British Columbia
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