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 The data were compiled by the California Environmental Health
Tracking Program, which tracks emergency room visits and
hospitalizations due to heat-related medical conditions such as
exhaustion and heat stroke.
Over the course of a decade, emergency room visits for heat-related
illness increased across California by 35 percent, researchers
found.
The increase was higher in minority groups such as African Americans
and Hispanics than in the population overall.
Between 2005 and 2015, heat-related emergency department visits rose
by an average of 67 percent for African Americans, 53 percent for
Asian Americans and 63 percent for Hispanics. These visits increased
by only 27 percent among whites.
The rates for African Americans and Asians were always higher than
for the overall population across the decade. Hispanic populations
and white populations had similar increases in rates until 2013,
after which the rates diverged.
The research was conducted at the Weill Cornell Medicine campus in
Doha, Qatar. Investigators there started studying the data to
compare California with Doha, which also sees a high amount of
heat-related illness, and with other places.
"California just happened to have very good, publicly available
data," said study co-author Dr. Grigory Ostrovskiy.
Older research has showcased the vulnerability to
heat-related-illness among ethnic minorities in agricultural
occupations. But Ostrovskiy and his colleague Ziyad Mahfoud, along
with medical student Rana Abualsaud, wanted to know whether this gap
was worsening or improving over time, they explain in Wilderness &
Environmental Medicine.
More research is needed to identify the cause of the
disproportionate rate increases, the researchers say. The study is
also limited because the data across the years may not be uniform
and may not account for migration to and from hotter counties in the
state, the team notes.
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However, they add, minorities are likely to be of lower
socioeconomic status and to live in densely populated areas with no
air conditioning.
"As global temperatures are rising, summers are getting hotter,"
Ostrovskiy told Reuters Health by email. "When this happens, people
who cannot change their environment, or are otherwise vulnerable,
end up being exposed to more heat than their body can get rid of."
"All ethnicities are coming to the hospitals more often with heat
related illness, but minorities are even more disproportionately
affected than they were before," he said.
Dr. Marc Schenker, a distinguished professor of public health
sciences and medicine at University of California, Davis, who was
not involved in the study, told Reuters Health he thinks the study
"was very appropriately cautious in conclusions, mentioning a lot of
possibilities for the observation."
"It highlights a few issues - one is climate change. As you know,
four of the five hottest years in record were in the past five
years. Climate change is real and it's something that has kind of
crept up on us," he said.
However, he cautioned, climate change is likely not the only reason
for an increase in heat-related illness.
"I wouldn't be surprised if there were other factors in terms of
health services that were involved, such as lack of care or delayed
care," Schenker said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2XrPdBQ Wilderness & Environmental Medicine,
online January 11, 2019.
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