Are there more cold deaths than heat deaths?

Abstract

Non-optimal temperatures are now considered among the leading risk factors of mortality worldwide.1 A global analysis showed that 9·4% of all deaths can be attributed to both cold and hot non-optimal temperatures, corresponding to about 5 million deaths.2 In most epidemiological studies, excess cold deaths far outnumber heat deaths. In that same global analysis, of the 9·4% attributable temperature-related deaths, 8·5% (range 6·2–10·5%) were cold-related and only 0·9% (range 0·6–1·4%) were heat-related,2 which corresponds to approximately 4·6 million deaths from cold and about 489 000 from heat, a ratio of roughly 9:1 of cold versus heat.

Topics & Concepts