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April 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, April 9 (HealthDay News) — Even small swings in
temperatures could put elderly people with chronic illnesses such as
diabetes, heart failure and lung disease at greater risk of death
throughout the coming summer, a new study indicates.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston found
temperature fluctuations related to climate change could claim thousands
of lives every year.
Experts predict climate change could increase variations in summer
temperatures, particularly in the mid-Atlantic states and in parts of
France, Spain and Italy. In these more volatile regions, this could pose a
serious public health risk, the study authors claimed.
“The effect of temperature patterns on long-term mortality has not been
clear to this point. We found that, independent of heat waves, high
day-to-day variability in summer temperatures shortens life expectancy,”
study author Antonella Zanobetti, a senior research scientist in the
department of environmental health at Harvard, said in a news release
from the university. “This variability can be harmful for susceptible
people.”
Using Medicare data from 1985 to 2006, the researchers tracked the
long-term health of 3.7 million chronically ill people older than 65
living in 135 American cities. After considering each person’s individual
risk factors, they determined if any of these people died due to
variability in summer temperature.
The study, published in the April 9 online edition of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that
years with larger summer temperature swings had higher death rates than
those with smaller swings. This was true for each city examined.
The researchers also noted each one-degree Centigrade increase (about
1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in summer temperature variability increased the
death rate for elderly with chronic conditions by between 2.8 percent and
4 percent.
More specifically, the mortality risk for those with diabetes increased
4 percent. It also rose 3.8 percent for people who had suffered a previous
heart attack, 3.7 percent for those with chronic lung disease and 2.8
percent for people with heart failure.
The temperature-related death risk was 1 percent to 2 percent higher
for black people as well as those living in poverty, the study noted. The
risk of death was also higher for the elderly people living in hotter
areas.
Based on these findings, the researchers estimated that greater summer
temperature variability in the United States could result in more than
10,000 additional deaths every year.
“People adapt to the usual temperature in their city. That is why we
don’t expect higher mortality rates in Miami than in Minneapolis, despite
the higher temperatures,” study senior author Joel Schwartz, a professor
of environmental epidemiology at Harvard, explained in the news
release.
“But people do not adapt as well to increased fluctuations around the
usual temperature. That finding, combined with the increasing age of the
population, the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions such as
diabetes and possible increases in temperature fluctuations due to climate
change, means that this public health problem is likely to grow in
importance in the future,” Schwartz added.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about heat stress and the elderly.
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