Scientists Estimate Heat-Related Deaths In 297 US Counties Nearly 10X Higher Than Thought
A new study from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) reports that heat-related fatalities in the United States are much higher than what was previously thought, and that even moderate heat can be deadly.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 600 deaths can be attributed to heat each year. However, the researchers found evidence that this number is actually in the thousands. The experts determined that heat contributed to an average of 5,600 deaths each year between 1997 and 2006 in 297 counties.
For the study, heat was not simply based on the temperature, but on the temperatures that are typical for each particular region. From this perspective, most of the heat-related fatalities were associated with weather that is not considered extremely hot.
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The death statistics were combined with the Parameter-elevation Relationships on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM), which estimates temperatures across the United States within a precise range of four square kilometers. Across the counties examined, moderate heat killed 3,309 people per year, while extreme heat killed 2,299 people each year.
EDIT
https://www.earth.com/news/heat-kills-thousands-in-the-united-states-each-year/
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The heat wave I remember was 10 (?) years ago or so? Five thousand people died in Paris, and several thousand in Chicago.
If you live in a hot, humid area, you will never have evaporative cooling on your skin, because there is too much water in the air for the air to cool it. Basically, in the south, you have to have air conditioning to survive because of the humidity. The Sun Belt population increase over the last 50 years is due to central air in nearly all businesses and homes.
I realized that when the humidity is high, the temperature doesn't cool off at night. It stays hot. I grew up in a big city in the South and we did not have central air. At the time, central air was for rich people. (1960s) They installed central air in my junior high school around 1966. I heard country people say they thought it was a luxury, but that attitude changed. Lots of times as a kid it was too hot to sleep at night. It was 85 or 90. We had a couple of inadequate window units for cooling. Attic fans act like a convection oven and cook you faster. Mom would turn bright red and she would be miserable because we didn't have enough cooling. And this was after she went through the change!
I think that maybe people have realized that if you're going to be functional in an office in the summer, you need central air in lots of places.
I found out that as far as the Gulf Coast, the humidity doesn't drop enough for cool nights in the summer until you get to Oklahoma or somewhere in West Texas. Once I was in Oklahoma City in July. It was evening and I was in a parking lot. Sun goes down, breeze starts up, and it's cool.
Dallas, 300 miles from the coast, is still too humid to be comfortable. San Antonio is less humid and higher altitude than Houston, and has more sun and less rainfall than Houston, but it's still miserable for 5 or 6 months out of the year. San Antonio has over 300 days of sunshine a year. That's why they have had 5 military bases there. So they can fly most of the time.
I got heat exhaustion once playing racquetball in an indoor, allegedly AC'd facility. Got the pounding headache and the barfs, and had to go to the ER. Learned my lesson.
