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      Geographical differences on the mortality impact of heat waves in Europe

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      Environmental Health
      BioMed Central

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          Abstract

          Climate change is potentially the biggest global health threat in the 21st century. Deaths related with heat waves and spread of infectious diseases will be part of the menace though the major impact will be caused by malnutrition, diarrhea and extreme climate events. Consequently, loss of healthy life years as a result of global climate change is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations. However, the increase of more than 2°C of average temperature will result in a negative health impact in all regions, the potential benefits of a warmer temperature being negatively compensated, heat waves being one of the largest climate change threats in the developed world.

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          Has the impact of heat waves on mortality changed in France since the European heat wave of summer 2003? A study of the 2006 heat wave.

          In July 2006, a lasting and severe heat wave occurred in Western Europe. Since the 2003 heat wave, several preventive measures and an alert system aiming at reducing the risks related to high temperatures have been set up in France by the health authorities and institutions. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of those measures, the observed excess mortality during the 2006 heat wave was compared to the expected excess mortality. A Poisson regression model relating the daily fluctuations in summer temperature and mortality in France from 1975 to 2003 was used to estimate the daily expected number of deaths over the period 2004-2006 as a function of the observed temperatures. During the 2006 heat wave (from 11 to 28 July), about 2065 excess deaths occurred in France. Considering the observed temperatures and with the hypothesis that heat-related mortality had not changed since 2003, 6452 excess deaths were predicted for the period. The observed mortality during the 2006 heat wave was thus markedly less than the expected mortality (approximately 4400 less deaths). The excess mortality during the 2006 heat wave, which was markedly lower than that predicted by the model, may be interpreted as a decrease in the population's vulnerability to heat, together with, since 2003, increased awareness of the risk related to extreme temperatures, preventive measures and the set-up of the warning system.
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            Heat wave impacts on mortality in Shanghai, 1998 and 2003.

            A variety of research has linked extreme heat to heightened levels of daily mortality and, not surprisingly, heat waves both in 1998 and in 2003 all led to elevated mortality in Shanghai, China. While the heat waves in the two years were similar in meteorological character, elevated mortality was much more pronounced during the 1998 event, but it remains unclear why the human response was so varied. In order to explain the differences in human mortality between the two years' heat waves, and to better understand how heat impacts human health, we examine a wide range of meteorological, pollution, and social variables in Shanghai during the summers (15 June to 15 September) of 1998 and 2003. Thus, the goal of this study is to determine what was responsible for the varying human health response during the two heat events. A multivariate analysis is used to investigate the relationships between mortality and heat wave intensity, duration, and timing within the summer season, along with levels of air pollution. It was found that for heat waves in both summers, mortality was strongly associated with the duration of the heat wave. In addition, while slightly higher than average, the air pollution levels for the two heat waves were similar and cannot fully explain the observed differences in human mortality. Finally, since the meteorological conditions and pollution levels for the two heat waves were alike, we conclude that improvements in living conditions in Shanghai, such as increased use of air conditioning, larger living areas, and increased urban green space, along with higher levels of heat awareness and the implementation of a heat warning system, were responsible for the lower levels of human mortality in 2003 compared to 1998.
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              Global environmental change and health: impacts, inequalities, and the health sector.

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Environ Health
                Environmental Health
                BioMed Central
                1476-069X
                2010
                16 July 2010
                : 9
                : 38
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Centre for Research on Environmental epidemiology. CREAL-Barcelona, Spain
                Article
                1476-069X-9-38
                10.1186/1476-069X-9-38
                2914718
                20637066
                01c41dbe-3ceb-486d-bcdc-a1e72b3a86a7
                Copyright ©2010 Sunyer; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 1 July 2010
                : 16 July 2010
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