Zoltan Nagy in The Conversation:
Most heat-related deaths occur indoors. When a heat dome sent temperatures soaring in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, 98% of the more than 600 deaths in British Columbia happened inside homes. Washington and Oregon also saw high numbers of deaths in homes that lacked air conditioning.
In Europe, where only 1 in 10 households have air conditioning, heat waves killed an estimated 60,000 people in 2022 and 47,000 in 2023, largely inside buildings never designed for these temperatures.
People of all ages are at risk in heat waves like these. I spent eight years at the University of Texas at Austin studying how buildings respond to extreme heat. In a recent study, my team assessed the heat risk in every single-family home in Austin.
We found that even younger, healthy adults face far more risk than they realize.
More here.
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