Experts say a mishmash of ways more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means we don’t really know how many people die in the U.S. each year because of high temperatures in an ever warming world.
Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox.Even when it seems obvious that extreme heat was a factor, death certificates don't always reflect the role it played. Experts say a mishmash of ways more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means we don't really know how many people die in the U.S. each year because of high temperatures in an ever warming world.
Currently, about the only consistency in counting heat deaths in the U.S. is that officials and climate specialists acknowledge fatalities are grossly undercounted. The excess deaths calculation is often used to estimate the death toll in natural disasters, with researchers tallying fatalities that exceeded those that occurred at the same time the previous year when circumstances were average.
Khatana participated in research published last year that counted excess deaths in all U.S. counties. The findings suggested that from 2008 to 2017 between 3,000 to 20,000 adult deaths from all causes listed on death certificates were linked to extreme heat. Heart disease was listed as the cause of about half of the deaths.
Utah and Massachusetts are among states that do not track heat-related deaths where exposure to extreme heat was a secondary factor. “If someone was shot in the head, it's pretty obvious what happened there," Hess said. “But when you find a body in a hot apartment 48 hours after they died, there is a lot of ambiguity.”
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