The Mortality Effect of Apparent Temperature: A Multi-City Study in Asia

Abstract

(1) Background: The health effect of temperature has become a rising public health topic. The objective of this study is to assess the association between apparent temperature and non-accidental deaths, and the mortality burden attributed to cold and heat temperature; (2) Methods: The daily data on temperature and deaths were collected from 10 cities in Thailand, Korea and China. We fitted a time-series regression with a distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) to derive the health risk of temperature for each city and then pooled them to get the overall cumulative risk by multivariate meta-analysis. Additionally, we calculated the attributable fraction of deaths for heat and cold, which was defined as temperatures above and below minimum-mortality temperature (MMT); (3) Results: There are regional heterogeneities in the minimum mortality percentiles (MMP) and attributable fractions for different countries. The MMP varied from about the 5–10th percentile in Thailand to 63–93rd percentile in China and Korea. The attributable fractions of the total deaths due to short-term exposure to temperature in Asia is 7.62%, of which the cold effect (6.44%) is much higher than the heat effect (1.18%); (4) Conclusions: Our study suggested that apparent temperature was associated with an increase in non-accidental mortality. Most of the temperature-related mortality burden was attributable to cold, except for Thailand.

The effect of apparent temperature on hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases in rural areas of Pingliang, China

“…The findings obtained showed a considerable effect of low AT, which is consistent with the results of several prior studies on the AT-mortality relationship in other areas [23]. A previous study in Kintampo, Ghana, investigated how the RR increased in the lowest AT of 18 ° from 2-4 lags, and the highest RR was observed 3 days after exposure [24].…”

“…Possible reasons behind this variation might be the living habits and climatic conditions. The presented study compared the heat effect, in the 95th percentiles of AT (23 °), with the median of AT (9.41 °); the high AT in this study was lower than that in other studies [8,16,23,24], which might explain why the protective effect of heat appeared in the current study. In addition, the study covered the rural area of Pingliang; rural areas are usually cooler than urbans with less anthropogenic activities, lower number of high buildings and more green plants, which may be beneficial in hot weather for the countryside compared with cities.…”

“…However, other prior studies showed that RR of CVD increases with the heat effect (25.2 °), as in the study by Whanhee et al in northeast Asia [28]. In another study on the population from 10 Asian cities, the exposure-response curve of the heat effect (20-30 °) showed a nonlinear and sharp increase [23]. In Lisbon and Porto, Portugal, the mortality risk increased as AT increased [15].…”

Evidence from Temperature Analog for Traditional and Economic Cities in Nigeria: Implications for Sustainable City-Related Actions

“…Across the globe, each continent is confronted with harsh and uncertain climate conditions. In Europe, temperature has increased more than the global average (1.3°C) [23] while in Asia, the total number of deaths due to short-term exposure to temperature is 7.62% [19]. In Africa, surface temperature is observed to have increased by at least 0.5°C in the last 50 to 100 years, and the maximum temperature rises more quickly than the minimum temperature [53].…”

A Low-Cost, Easy-to-Assemble Device to Prevent Infant Hyperthermia under Conditions of High Thermal Stress

“…Accordingly, mortality risk under thermal stress can be better explained by considering both T amb and RH amb [5][6][7][8]. To this end, a variable such as the Heat Index (HI) was constructed to provide a single value that integrates the effects of T amb and RH amb to estimate thermal risk [9].…”