An investigation from NPR and Boston University finds that heat kills thousands of Americans every year. But official numbers radically undercount heat deaths.
An investigation by NPR and Boston University finds that heat kills thousands of Americans every year. Official numbers undercount heat deaths, leaving policymakers – also the public – blind to the real toll. NPR's Alejandra Borunda led this investigation. She's with me now. Hey there.
ALEJANDRA BORUNDA, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Hi. So you spent two years working on this. That's quite the undertaking. What did you find?
BORUNDA: Yeah, it was a long process. We found that heat deaths are massively undercounted in the U.S. Federal numbers say about 1,700 people die each year from heat-related causes, but in my reporting, I just kept hearing things that made me think the number must be much larger. And researchers like Quinn Adams from Boston University were wondering the same.
QUINN ADAMS: We're not really fully understanding the depth of the problem.
BORUNDA: So together, we set out to get a better estimate of heat-related deaths. And we did that with Adams by developing a statistical model. And what we found was a much bigger impact from heat than official records suggest – some 9,000 deaths a year. That's about five times higher than the official records.
KELLY: Five times higher than official records – why such a disparity? How do so many heat deaths manage not to get counted?
BORUNDA: Yeah, it's a really good question. So to show up in those official counts, heat must be marked down on someone's death record, but that doesn't always happen, and that's because it can just be really hard to figure out how heat influenced a death. There's often multiple factors at play, like a preexisting heart condition, and so doctors or medical examiners or coroners often have to really look for heat role – heat's role. And that takes time, it takes training, it takes money, and there aren't really clear national standards, so everyone is kind of figuring this out for themselves.
KELLY: You know, any story that has to do with numbers and data and how they line up – behind those numbers are real people. And I know that a big piece of your reporting was going out and finding the stories of people who died from heat and whose deaths were not counted in official tolls. What did you learn?
BORUNDA: Yeah, exactly. And mainly our investigation shows that heat risk is much more widespread than people think. It's an issue everywhere in the country, not just places we think of as hot. And the risks are definitely higher for certain people. Like I was saying before, those with preexisting health conditions are one of those groups, but also people living in manufactured homes. And drug use and addiction can also factor in. Really often, I would hear about financial pressure, which meant that people couldn't afford to run their ACs or swamp coolers, or maybe they broke, and they couldn't afford to fix them. And that's the story I heard from Tara Gentner in Tucson. Her mom died in a situation like that.
TARA GENTNER: I woke up covered in sweat. I went to the kitchen to get a drink, and my mom's laying there on the floor in front of the swamp cooler that's blowing hot air and a rotating fan that's blowing hot air.
BORUNDA: The house, she said, was boiling hot. Her mom's internal temperature was 106, and she died later that day.
KELLY: So what can we do with this? What can be done to help prevent deaths like hers?
BORUNDA: Yeah, it's a great question. So Adams and other experts told me you can't fix a problem you don't see clearly. So the first step is to actually count these deaths more accurately and understand who is most at risk. Then, of course, we want to help people. That could be providing assistance, paying for cooling or insulating homes directly or educating people most at risk and their caregivers. There's tons of ideas out there, and a lot of places like Arizona are working on those solutions, but that's not happening across the country, and that's even more important to think about because we know that climate change is making things hotter and hotter.
