Extreme Heat: Not only kills, but makes people get sick easily

As the earth experiences hotter and hotter summers, new research using data from California emergency departments shows that the heat may be making us...

As the earth experiences hotter and hotter summers, new research using data from California emergency departments shows that the heat may be making us sicker than we know, and in ways we may not anticipate.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances tracked emergency department visits and fatalities in the United States over the course of 11 years and found that while deaths increased both in cold and hot temperatures, especially among older adults, emergency room visits steadily increased as temperatures did - particularly among young children.

The findings underscore the impact that a hotter planet has on lives, health and medical infrastructure.

While scientists have spent decades covering how extreme heat and cold lead to death, "we have a relatively poor understanding of whether those relationships are the same for morbidity - rates of disease and poor health,” said Carlos Gould, the paper’s lead author and an environmental health scientist at the University of California San Diego.

The focus on fatalities could be because of how deadly heat is - it’s the most lethal form of extreme weather.