Cold weather kills more people than hot weather

Los Angeles Times : After studying 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012, a team led by Antonio Gasparini of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has concluded that cold weather is deadlier than hot weather. The study calculated an “optimum” temperature for each of 384 cities in the study. The optimum marked the temperature when deaths were least likely to occur and for each city was closer to the highest temperature than the lowest. Days were then labeled cold or hot depending on whether they were below or above that optimum temperature. Then the 2.5% of the coldest and hottest days in each city were used to define when temperatures were extreme. Each day’s deaths were categorized as weather-related or not. Cold but not extremely cold days accounted for 6.7% of total deaths and extremely cold days accounted for another 0.6%. However, extreme cold was the cause of 10% of deaths on those days. Hot days accounted for only 0.4% of total deaths, but on extremely hot days, weather-related deaths were nearly 50% of the daily total. Because the study didn’t include any nations in the Middle East or Africa, the result may not hold true everywhere, but having a better understanding of weather-related deaths overall may improve public health policies.