Most people are acutely aware of the toll the heat can take on human life, particularly since the extreme heat of Black Saturday in 2009 and the European heatwave of 2003. So it may come as a surprise that more Australians die from the cold than the heat.
A new study published in The Lancet shows 6.5 percent of deaths in this country are attributed to cold weather, compared with 0.5 percent from hot weather. Most deaths will be from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as it’s the heart and lungs that struggle when we are outside our comfort zone.
When cold weather deaths were first noticed the theory was that it was due to people shoveling snow. Then when deaths were shown in warm countries such as Australia, the finger of blame moved onto the flu. While the winter flu does kill a lot of people, the majority of winter deaths are due to cold exposure via an increase in blood pressure.
The increase in blood pressure due to cold is relatively small for individuals, but almost everybody is exposed to the temperature and hence it becomes a large public health issue.
This is actually not a new finding. A seminal study also in the Lancet in 1997 demonstrated that cold was a major killer across Europe, and other studies have used historical records to show that cold has been a serious problem for centuries.
