deadly wave Increases in heart attacks and strokes are heading for the United States due to extreme heat waves caused by climate change, but those deaths are most likely to occur in older people and Black people.
According to Research results announced Monday, If nothing is done to curb climate change and the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving heatwaves, deaths from heatwave-related cardiovascular disease could triple, killing about 5,500 people a year. be. And even if the U.S. were to achieve some level of emissions reduction by staying on its current planned reduction path, deaths from cardiovascular disease could more than double, resulting in 4,300 additional deaths per year. Due to the combined effects of age, genetic vulnerability, geography, and heat-trapping aspects of urban development, researchers found that older adults are at higher risk, with Black adults at higher risk than any other group. We expect to be at risk.
“The public health impacts of climate change are falling on people who live on the margins of our society,” said cardiologist Sameed Katana, assistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “All policy measures and mitigation measures must be tailored to the most vulnerable individuals.”
This prediction originated with Katana’s group at the University of Pennsylvania. previously modeled The relationship between the current number of deaths from heart attacks and strokes and the increase in “hot days” (heat index greater than 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a measure of apparent temperature that is the product of ambient temperature and relative humidity). Using data from 3,108 counties in the continental United States from 2008 to 2017, they found a trend toward an increasing number of extremely hot days, as well as an increase in mortality rates from cardiovascular disease. They say that by 2019, there were 54 hot days a year, resulting in 1,651 deaths each year.
This currently accounts for only a small portion of all deaths from cardiovascular disease in the United States. However, given that thermal events are expected to increase with climate change, they thought it was worth investigating how rising temperatures would affect mortality rates. The results were dramatic.
To perform the new analysis, they combined previous research with rising global temperatures, migration to warmer areas of the United States, an aging U.S. population, and demographic trends that would shift the majority of the population away from white people. Combined with change prediction. Not Hispanic. The team then plotted the possible effects of these combined factors within the two scenarios. One is that the United States succeeds in limiting greenhouse gas emissions to a modest increase, a scenario known as RCP 4.5, which represents a high probability that existing policies will be implemented. The other is known as RCP 8.5, where emissions increase essentially indefinitely.
