#012: Preventing temperature-related deaths
Feat. Drinkable Sewage, Edible Spoons, and the Adjacent Possible
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In This Edition (10 minute read)
How the heat and the cold cause millions of avoidable deaths each year and some ideas for preventing those deaths
The Idea List, which explores drinkable sewage water, AI and 911 call takers, altered blood types for donor kidneys, edible utensils, and energy from ocean waves
The adjacent possible
It feels like there’s a new record-breaking heat wave every week these days. Whether in the U.S., Europe, or China, extreme heat draws attention because of its deadliness and connection to climate change. The media attention is warranted; according to a recent report from the UN’s climate panel, the frequency and intensity of heat waves will continue to increase across the globe. And heat exposure can be deadly.
What’s interesting is that many more people die from cold exposure every year, but it seems like nobody cares about that side of the thermometer. In this post, I want to acknowledge the danger of the heat, but I also want to shed light on the overlooked danger of the cold. And because temperature-related deaths are so avoidable, I want to explore ways to prevent them from happening.
Heat is bad, but cold deserves more attention
It can be difficult to link deaths with heat and cold because of the sometimes-indirect nature of temperature-related deaths. Heat and cold can lead to direct illnesses like heat stroke and hypothermia, or they can cause complications from underlying health conditions, which aren’t always recorded as temperature-related deaths. Because of this challenge, researchers try to calculate the number of temperature-related deaths in many different ways, leading to varied estimates of just how deadly heat and cold are. But while the estimates vary, one thing is consistent: the cold is responsible for many more deaths than the heat.
Some researchers use death certificates to estimate temperature-related deaths. One report from the National Center for Health Statistics estimated 2,000 weather-related deaths in the U.S. each year from 2006 to 2010. Using death certificates to link deaths to specific weather, the report’s authors found that about 63% of the deaths came from cold exposure, 31% from heat exposure, and 6% from floods, storms, or lightning. This would mean that (in the U.S.): (1) heat and cold cause 15 times more deaths than floods, storms, and lightning, and (2) cold causes twice as many deaths as the heat.
Since they used death certificates, the report’s authors acknowledge that 2,000 deaths might be an undercount. While heat stroke and hypothermia would show up on death certificates, information related to temperature might not get recorded in cases where death is indirectly caused by heat or cold. Still, the report gives a helpful baseline for direct temperature-related deaths in the U.S.
Other researchers try to account for indirect temperature-related deaths. The Lancet published a series of research papers looking at excess deaths on abnormally hot and cold days globally. In these papers, causes of death could include cardiorespiratory and metabolic diseases as well as homicide and transport-related injuries.
Each paper finds that deaths from the cold outnumber deaths from the heat across the globe, and it’s not even close; cold deaths outnumber heat deaths by 17 times in a 2015 study, 9 times in a 2021 study, and 4 times in another 2021 study. Despite these results, media attention focused almost exclusively on heat deaths; even The Lancet’s own article describing one of the studies was titled “Health in a world of extreme heat.”
In study after study, the cold is responsible for many more deaths than the heat, but that doesn’t mean we should discard the heat as a problem. If anything, the studies suggest that we should be taking deaths from both heat and cold much more seriously. Of the two latest Lancet studies, one estimated 5.1 million temperature-related deaths per year globally (4.6 million from the cold and 0.5 million from the heat); the other estimated 1.7 million (1.35 million from the cold and 0.35 million from the heat). This doesn’t mean that millions of people are freezing or overheating to death each year; they might be dying indirectly from heat or cold, whether of underlying health issues or something else. Regardless, millions of people across the world die from heat and cold each year. And since the U.S. makes up only a few thousand of those deaths, the problem is much more pronounced abroad.
A problem causing that much harm is surely worth examining and mitigating, both globally and at home!
Preventing deaths from heat and cold
Here’s what we know so far:
Millions of people across the world die from heat and cold each year
Most temperature-related deaths are due to the cold
Most temperature-related deaths happen outside of the U.S.
In a world facing more frequent days with extreme temperatures and rising energy costs, we need to help people protect themselves from temperature-related death.
Increasing access to clean in-home heating and cooling. Air conditioner ownership is more than 90% in the U.S. and Japan, but it’s less than 5% in sub-Saharan Africa and less than 10% in India, despite those regions having twice as many days where cooling is needed. And 40% of the world’s population (about 3 billion people) doesn’t have access to electricity or gas, instead using “solid fuels” like wood, coal, and even crop waste to heat their homes and cook their food.
Burning solid fuels at home creates toxic indoor air pollution, which is estimated to cause millions of deaths per year. It’s possible that many of the cold deaths observed in The Lancet studies are due to indoor air pollution in homes heated with solid fuels! Can we find in-home heating and cooling solutions that (1) don’t cost much, (2) don’t cause significant air pollution, and (3) don’t require electricity or gas? Perhaps homes could be smartly designed to naturally increase airflow or retain heat. Or perhaps we could provide cheap blankets and warm clothing to people who need them.
But better access to in-home heating and cooling units comes at the cost of increased energy consumption. We’ve seen this firsthand in the U.S.: a heat wave in California recently put incredible strain on their power grid, and a series of winter storms in 2021 caused a massive power outage and dozens of deaths in Texas. The perfect in-home heating and cooling solution combines low cost with low energy consumption. Startups and researchers are already working on more efficient heating and cooling devices, but they likely won’t be cheap in the short-term.
Designing cities to be temperature-adaptive. Several U.S. cities are experimenting with ways to keep their citizens cool during heat waves. Some are experimenting with more reflective roofs and pavements, which can reduce temperatures by 5 degrees and make it feel 15 degrees cooler. Other cities are introducing cooling centers with air conditioning, water, and social services; they come in the form of shipping containers or networks of churches and libraries. But such interventions are concentrated in the U.S. and designed to combat the heat. Can we come up with equivalent interventions for the cold? Can we help bring such interventions to others in the global community?
Changing the weather with science. China is taking another route when it comes to fighting the heat: shooting stuff into the clouds to make it rain. Called cloud seeding, the technique uses particles to attract water droplets, increasing the chance that rain will fall. The science behind cloud seeding is uncertain, but it got me thinking about other ways we could manipulate the weather. What if we could induce a constant breeze on a hot day? Or minimize cloud coverage on a cold day? Or reduce the wind chill on a cold day?
The Idea List
🚰 Turn sewage water into drinking water
As droughts become more common and more severe, we will have to find creative ways to conserve and reuse water. Water from our toilets, showers, and sinks might have to get reused someday, so I fully support any early efforts working to make that possible. People are also using sewage water to make beer, and apparently it’s pretty tasty.
📞 Use AI to relieve 911 call taker shortages
I’ve written previously about burnout among 911 call takers. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a 911 call center. Sure enough, their biggest struggle by far is staffing. I learned that many call centers are so desperate for call takers that they’re using AI to handle non-emergency calls. In a future where nothing changes about the job description and working conditions of 911 call takers, you might just be talking to a robot when you call 911.
🩸 Increase kidney donations by changing the blood type of donor kidneys
There are almost 90,000 people on the waitlist for a kidney donation in the U.S., and about 5,000 people die each year waiting for a kidney. I am particularly excited about the potential of technology to decrease the number of people on the waitlist, whether through lab-grown or (as in this article) lab-modified kidneys. In this particular case, scientists discovered a way to change the blood type of donor kidneys, making them universally compatible. This technique could be a big win for ethnic minorities, who make up a significant portion of people on the waitlist but a much lower portion of donors, meaning that they’re much less likely to find a match.
🍴 Replace single-use plastic utensils with edible ones
We can all agree that single-use plastic is bad for the environment, but paper straws are a terrible alternative. Maybe a strawberry-flavored, sugar-based straw wouldn’t be much better, but I’m rooting for the people trying to bring edible utensils, plates, and cups to the mainstream. It’s already normal to eat a waffle cone with ice cream; what if it was normal to eat a cookie cup with coffee or a black pepper spoon with soup?
🌊 Harness power from the motion of the ocean
A new project from ARPA-E wants to use ocean waves as a renewable energy source. This isn’t a new idea; for a long time, scientists have believed that waves could be a great source of renewable energy. However, working in the ocean is expensive and difficult, and it’s been harder than expected to design a turbine that captures wave power effectively. The SHARKS project hopes to break through those barriers and provide an economically viable way to harness the power of waves.
One Last Thing: The Adjacent Possible
This month, I listened to Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From on audiobook, and I was fascinated by his discussion of a concept called ‘the adjacent possible.’
This quote from Steven Johnson’s newsletter captures how I like to think about it:
“In terms of technology, there’s simply no way to invent a microwave oven in 1650, however smart you might be. But somehow, in the middle of the 20th century, the idea of a microwave oven became imaginable, became part of the adjacent possible.”
The adjacent possible is the set of possibilities, given the current state of the world. It would have been impossible to invent the microwave in 1650 because the invention of the microwave was dependent on other inventions and ideas. Once those ideas came into existence, the invention of microwave was just a matter of putting them together. New ideas are just combinations of existing ideas!
When it comes to my interest in thinking about new ideas, it’s important to expand my adjacent possible. By listening to podcasts, reading articles, and writing newsletters, I’m building up a bank of ideas that I can put together in other contexts to create new ideas. Now that I know about edible utensils, for instance, I can keep that idea in my back pocket until it becomes relevant in another context. Of course, many of the ideas I find will never be useful, but I’m hoping to overcome the long odds with quantity.
Until next time,
Noah
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