By Robert Preidt
HealthDay reporter
THURSDAY, July 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) – Climate change is already deadly enough to cause 5 million additional deaths worldwide each year, researchers report.
“This is the first study to provide a global overview of sub-optimal temperature mortality between 2000 and 2019, the hottest time since the pre-industrial era,” said study director Yuming Guo, professor at Monash University in Australia.
The results are based on an analysis of global temperature and death data from 2000 to 2019. During this time, global temperature rose by 0.26 degrees Celsius per decade.
The study’s authors found that 9.4% of global deaths were due to very cold and hot temperatures, resulting in 74 additional deaths per 100,000 people, with most deaths caused by exposure to the cold.
By region, the annual temperature-related deaths were: Asia 2.6 million; Africa, 1.2 million; China, 1.04 million; Europe, 835,000; United States, 173,600; South America, 141,000; India, 74,000; Great Britain 52,000 and Australia 16,500.
The researchers also found that from 2000 to 2019, cold-related deaths decreased by 0.51%, while heat-related deaths increased by 0.21%.
Deaths from hot temperatures increased in all regions, suggesting that global warming from climate change will lead to an increase in heat-related deaths in the future, according to the new study. It was published in The Lancet Planetary Health on July 7th.
“It is important that we used the basic data from 43 countries on five continents with different climates, socio-economic and demographic conditions and different levels of infrastructure and public health, so that the study had a large and different sample size in contrast to previous studies”, Guo told a university press release.
Understanding the geographic patterns of temperature-related deaths is important in developing strategies and strategies to adapt to and reduce the effects of climate change and protect people’s health, he said.
More information
The World Health Organization has more about climate change and health.
SOURCE: Monash University, press release, July 7, 2021
Comments are closed.