October 2, 2024
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Hurricanes killed people for years after the first disaster
The average tropical cyclone in the United States ends up causing about 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths, new study finds
More than 160 people lost their lives to Hurricane Helen’s ferocious winds and devastating flooding. But it will be several years, perhaps more than a decade, before the true number of deaths is known.
New study published Wednesday nature The average tropical cyclone in the United States ends up with about 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths (excess deaths above ordinarily expected), compared to an average of 24 direct deaths reported in official statistics. was found to cause The study authors found that between 1950 and 2015, tropical storms and hurricanes caused between 3.6 million and 5.2 million excess deaths, more than traffic deaths and infectious disease deaths. estimated. And these storm-related deaths involve some groups of people more than others, and are “an important and understudied contributor to the health of the United States, especially young people and Black people.” ”, the authors write.
“These people are dying years before they would otherwise have died,” says study co-author Rachel Young, an environmental economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
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This study is part of a rapidly growing trend to fully assess the health impacts of disasters, which are increasing due to climate change. Epidemiologists and other experts are increasingly emphasizing that heat wave deaths are vastly underestimated, with recent studies showing that in California, wildfire smoke causes far more deaths than actual fires. Thousands of people were found dead. “I thought something similar happened with hurricanes,” Young said.
So she and Stanford University economist Solomon Siang looked at hurricane and death rate data for the United States from 1930 to 2015, and used statistical methods to determine the state’s death toll before the storms and from 1950 to 2015. We compared the number of deaths that occurred over a 20-year period. “We thought there would be a lag of maybe six months or a year,” Young said, but data shows excess deaths occur for 15 years after the storm. “We were very surprised,” she says, adding that researchers spent years testing and retesting to make sure the effect was real.
Based on the data, the duration of effects makes sense because “these are huge events,” Young says. “Look what’s happening to Helen.” Families may have to spend months in damaged or mold-ridden homes before repairs are made. People will have to use their savings for repairs, potentially leaving them with less money for health care for years. People may be forced to move and live far from important social support networks. And these events take a considerable toll on mental health. “This is devastating for individuals, but it’s also devastating for local and state governments,” Young said, noting that other studies show that these governments experience years of budget declines after hurricanes. He pointed out that it shows that For those affected, she added. “You’re in a version of the world where you have less money, fewer resources, and more exposure to pollution.” That’s a bad combination when it comes to staying healthy.
When the data was broken down by age group, the study found that people 65 and older had the highest number of excess storm-related deaths. However, given the generally higher probability of death in this age group, the risk of death from the storm was smaller for this group than for other groups. The greatest risk was found to be for infants under one year of age, with most of these deaths occurring within two years after the storm. Young said this impact could be influenced not only by stress and other factors, but also by people being unable to afford prenatal care in the aftermath of the storm.
The risk of death was also higher for blacks than for whites, even though the white population exposed to the storm was much larger than the black population exposed.
The analysis also showed that “the mortality response was not decreasing over time,” Young said. This means that today’s storms are having the same long-tail mortality impact as they were decades ago. Young and Shan say they don’t know exactly why this happens, and that more research is needed to dig into the reasons.
The mortality findings were particularly shocking to Eugenio Paglino, a postdoctoral researcher at the Helsinki Institute of Demography and Population Health, who was not involved in the new study. He said that when he first read the paper’s abstract, he thought the number of excess deaths the authors found “seemed quite high,” but that he felt they had done a thorough job of checking the robustness of their results. said. He would like to see further research investigate the actual causes of these excess deaths and further support his findings.
Young and Hsiang would also like to see this type of follow-up, and would like to do some research themselves. This is a necessary step toward the ultimate goal of informing policymakers about what is needed to protect communities in the face of growing climate disasters. As Helen shows, “Local and state governments and first responders do heroic work to help people after disasters,” says Young. “We don’t want their efforts to go to waste.”