A project to count the death toll from the climate crisis achieves surprising results

The analysis also excluded deaths from air pollution, which Public Health England estimates is equivalent to 28,000 and 36,000 dead every year in the UK. Glickman said there is currently no accepted way to differentiate the effects of rising temperatures on air pollution. Add all these caveats together and the ONS analysis can be a bit conservative.

Then there’s a big reason why climate change hasn’t killed more people in England and Wales: a very mild climate.Although the UK’s average temperature has risen by 0.9 degrees compared to the period 1961 to 1990, its inhabitants are not some of the 3 billion people facing uninhabitable condition If greenhouse gas emissions increase rapidly. While cold-weather-related deaths fell in England and Wales, there was a net increase in warm-weather-related hospitalisations on warmer days. This is especially true in terms of injuries, which may be due to more people being outdoors when the weather is warmer, or possibly related to an increase in violence and mental health problems associated with warmer temperatures.

The lower death rate may also indicate that our efforts to combat cold weather are paying off.Widespread flu vaccination to support people pay their heating bills The increase in home insulation means the coldest days won’t be as severe as they might be without these mitigations, Glickman said. A warm home may be a good thing now, but as summers in the UK get hotter and air conditioning is still scarce, it could start to become a problem.

The ONS will now release the data annually, but Glickman’s next project is to look more closely at how temperature changes affect different regions. “We’re going to take a deep look at local temperatures,” he said. “This will give us more solutions to what’s happening and to whom.” For example, the impact of climate change may depend on how affluent an area is, or how easily its residents have access to health care or community support .

Glickman also wants to explore the indirect effects of climate on health. “What will be of most interest in the next few years is the low-level health impacts such as flooding,” he said. If someone’s home is flooded, it could increase their vulnerability to respiratory illness or worsen their mental health.Researchers from the UK have found that people suffer from mental illness More likely to die in hot weather. We don’t know why this is the case, but the researchers believe it may be because people with mental illness are more likely to be socially isolated, or in poor health, which makes them more vulnerable when temperatures rise.

The team behind the ONS report is also part of a broader effort to create a global system to calculate climate-related health impacts. “We don’t have a solid set of statistics to categorize the impact of climate on health,” said Bilal Mateen, senior manager of digital technologies at the Wellcome Trust, a health charity that funds the new climate change health impacts programme.