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A new study has found that young people may be at much greater risk of dying from extreme heat induced by climate change than the elderly.
People under the age of 35 accounted for about 75 percent of recent heat-related deaths in Mexico, with a significant proportion falling between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the study, published Friday in Advances in Science.
The study’s authors stressed that the findings changed existing assumptions that older people are particularly at risk of dying from the impacts of extreme heat and that younger people might be more resilient to these effects.
“It’s a surprise,” co-author Jeffrey Shrader, an environmental and labor economist at Columbia University, said in a statement. “These are physiologically the most robust people in the population.”
The researchers said they chose Mexico for their study because the country collects granular data on both mortality and daily temperatures.
To draw their conclusions, they correlated excess mortality (the number of deaths above or below average) with temperatures on what is known as the “wet bulb scale.” This scale is a measure of the amplified effects of heat when combined with humidity.
Finally, they found that from 1998 to 2019, the county experienced about 3,300 heat-related fatalities each year.
Of the total annual heat deaths, almost a third fell in the 18-35 age group – a figure the authors described as “grossly disproportionate to the numbers in this age group”.
“We project, as the climate warms, heat-related deaths will increase, and young people will suffer more,” lead author R. Daniel Bressler, a PhD candidate in the Sustainable Development Program, said in a paper from Columbia. statement
The researchers attributed their findings to a variety of complex factors. Although younger adults tend to be more physiologically resistant to heat, the authors noted several behavioral, social, and economic circumstances that may be influential.
For young adult populations, heat exposures could be occurring through sports and other recreational activities, the lack of air conditioning in younger homes, and outdoor occupations that have measures of limited caution, according to the study.
“These are the younger people, low on the totem pole, probably doing the lion’s share of the hard work, with inflexible work arrangements,” Shrader said.
Although children under the age of 5, and infants in particular, were also highly vulnerable, this finding did not surprise the researchers. Because their immune systems are still developing, they tend to be more susceptible to diseases that come with humid heat, such as mosquito-borne diseases and diarrhea, according to the study.
What surprised the authors, however, was the observation that people in their 50s and 70s seemed to suffer fewer of these deaths. The researchers found that this population tended to have a greater risk of dying from mild cold than heat.
Although Mexico is largely tropical and subtropical, the higher elevation areas do have a cold climate, and older people tend to have lower core body temperatures, making them more sensitive to the cold, the study found . They may also be more likely to stay indoors, where infectious diseases spread more easily, the authors noted.
Looking ahead, the researchers stressed that their findings could have global implications, noting that Mexico is a middle-income country with an average share of the population under the age of 35.
Warmer and poorer countries, on the other hand, may have much younger populations working in manual labor at higher percentages, the authors warned.
“Therefore, if Mexico is any indicator, heat-related mortality in these nations could be massive,” they added.
