Heat-Related Morbidity and Mortality in New England: Evidence for Local Policy

Wellenius, Gregory A.; Eliot, Melissa; Bush, Kathleen F.; Holt, Dennis; Lincoln, Rebecca A.; Gold, Julia

doi:10.1289/isee.2016.4391

Cited by 12 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Our results show promise for the use of regionally specific health evidence to inform and calibrate heat alert protocols (22). Further, graduated heat alert protocols may help warn for low, moderate, and peak adverse health impacts.…”

Section: Statementioning

confidence: 82%

“…Our assessment is comprehensive in scope and scale, and has implications for current and future risk management related to heat exposure. Prior assessments that have tried to identify heat alert thresholds based on heat-health risk relationships are either city-specific or for communities covering a few states (11,22). This study's novelty lies in the comprehensive assessment of heat exposure on various morbidity outcomes, including those that are less well characterized in published literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessment of extreme heat and hospitalizations to inform early warning systems

Vaidyanathan

Saha

Vicedo‐Cabrera

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Heat early warning systems and action plans use temperature thresholds to trigger warnings and risk communication. In this study, we conduct multistate analyses, exploring associations between heat and all-cause and cause-specific hospitalizations, to inform the design and development of heat–health early warning systems. We used a two-stage analysis to estimate heat–health risk relationships between heat index and hospitalizations in 1,617 counties in the United States for 2003–2012. The first stage involved a county-level time series quasi-Poisson regression, using a distributed lag nonlinear model, to estimate heat–health associations. The second stage involved a multivariate random-effects meta-analysis to pool county-specific exposure–response associations across larger geographic scales, such as by state or climate region. Using results from this two-stage analysis, we identified heat index ranges that correspond with significant heat-attributable burden. We then compared those with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service (NWS) heat alert criteria used during the same time period. Associations between heat index and cause-specific hospitalizations vary widely by geography and health outcome. Heat-attributable burden starts to occur at moderately hot heat index values, which in some regions are below the alert ranges used by the NWS during the study time period. Locally specific health evidence can beneficially inform and calibrate heat alert criteria. A synchronization of health findings with traditional weather forecasting efforts could be critical in the development of effective heat–health early warning systems.

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Section: Statementioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of extreme heat and hospitalizations to inform early warning systems

Vaidyanathan

Saha

Vicedo‐Cabrera

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Temperature and mortality are linked not only at hot extremes, such as during heatwaves, but also at temperatures that are moderately hot (Gasparrini et al, 2015; Lee et al, 2014). Owing to their more frequent occurrence, small temperature changes at mild or moderate temperatures can have larger health impacts than changes at extreme levels, such as during heat or cold waves (Gasparrini et al, 2015; Sarofim et al, 2016; Wellenius et al, 2017). We do not address cold‐related mortality given its complexities and uncertainties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Heat Exposure on Human Mortality Throughout the United States

et al. 2020

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Exposure to high ambient temperatures is an important cause of avoidable, premature death that may become more prevalent under climate change. Though extensive epidemiological data are available in the United States, they are largely limited to select large cities, and hence, most projections estimate the potential impact of future warming on a subset of the U.S. population. Here we utilize evaluations of the relative risk of premature death associated with temperature in 10 U.S. cities spanning a wide range of climate conditions to develop a generalized risk function. We first evaluate the performance of this generalized function, which introduces substantial biases at the individual city level but performs well at the large scale. We then apply this function to estimate the impacts of projected climate change on heat-related nationwide U.S. deaths under a range of scenarios. During the current decade, there are 12,000 (95% confidence interval 7,400-16,500) premature deaths annually in the contiguous United States, much larger than most estimates based on totals for select individual cities. These values increase by 97,000 (60,000-134,000) under the high-warming Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario and by 36,000 (22,000-50,000) under the moderate RCP4.5 scenario by 2100, whereas they remain statistically unchanged under the aggressive mitigation scenario RCP2.6. These results include estimates of adaptation that reduce impacts by~40-45% as well as population increases that roughly offset adaptation. The results suggest that the degree of climate change mitigation will have important health impacts on Americans.

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“…We defined health‐relevant meteorological hazards as either present (above a hazard‐specific, health‐relevant threshold) or absent on each day during the warm season (May–September): (1) “Excessive heat days” are days with maximum heat indices greater than or equal to 95 °F (35 °C); (2) “heavy rainfall days” are days with liquid water equivalent precipitation greater than or equal to 1 inch (2.54 cm); (3) “O 3 exceedances” are days with 8‐hr O 3 maxima greater than or equal to 70 ppb; and (4) “PM 2.5 exceedances” are days with 24‐hr mean PM 2.5 concentrations greater than or equal to 35 μg/m 3 . The heat index threshold is based on the guideline criteria for issuance of heat advisories by the National Weather Service (NWS) for the region (National Weather Service, n.d.; Wellenius et al, ), the threshold for heavy precipitation was informed by the implicit characterization of a heavy rainfall day for the northeast in the Third National Climate Assessment (Kunkel et al, ), and the air quality thresholds are based on U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which are codified by the Clean Air Act.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing Spatial Variability of Climate‐Relevant Hazards and Vulnerabilities in the New England Region of the United States

et al. 2019

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Weather and climate have substantial effects on human health. While much is known about how morbidity and mortality are affected by moderate-to-extreme heat, poor air quality, and heavy precipitation individually, less is known about the cumulative occurrence of these climatic hazards, and the extent to which they spatially overlap with community-scale vulnerabilities. Specifically, there is interest in determining whether individuals living in places with the highest exposure to multiple health hazardous climatic conditions are also more vulnerable to having negative health outcomes. Presented here is a spatial analysis of the distribution of health-relevant climatic hazards and social vulnerabilities across the New England region of the northeastern United States. We show that the frequency of excessive heat days, heavy precipitation days, and ozone (O 3 ) and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) exceedances during the warm seasons (May-September) from 2009 to 2014 have distinct spatial distributions and are statistically significantly correlated across space with indicators of social vulnerability. We further quantify an integrated measure of the hazards and vulnerabilities to illustrate the spatial heterogeneity of overall risk, as well as to demonstrate how the choice of spatial scale influences the identification of high-risk areas. These methods are transferrable to other locations and contexts, which could be of utility not only to geographers and epidemiologists, but also to policymakers tasked with allocating public health resources to populations at greatest risk of weather-and climate-related health effects.Plain Language Summary It is well established that extreme heat, air pollution, and heavy rain can have negative effects on public health and that certain populations are particularly susceptible to these impacts. However, little attention has been given to how the frequency of these different types of hazards are distributed across space and whether they tend to cluster in places where people are more vulnerable to their negative health effects. In this paper, we examine weather and air pollution in New England and apply a method for identifying communities that have both frequent climate-related hazards and particularly vulnerable populations. Our applications are transferrable and expandable to other locations and hazards of interest, and they are of use both to researchers and decision-makers aiming to assess and reduce weather-and climate-related risks to public health.

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Heat-Related Morbidity and Mortality in New England: Evidence for Local Policy

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Assessment of extreme heat and hospitalizations to inform early warning systems

Assessment of extreme heat and hospitalizations to inform early warning systems

The Effects of Heat Exposure on Human Mortality Throughout the United States

Characterizing Spatial Variability of Climate‐Relevant Hazards and Vulnerabilities in the New England Region of the United States

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