In Reply to: Rainy days and Mondays always have some news* posted by mh on August 31, 2026 at 08:56:44
Thousands of Americans die every year from a chronically underreported cause: heat.
As summer heat intensifies because of human-driven climate change, the United States' official tally of heat-related deaths does not come close to capturing the full human toll. The data feeding into nationwide death counts is collected inconsistently and rarely thoroughly.
The result is a vast undercount of the number of people who die because of heat. And experts say failing to recognize and address this may cost more people their lives.
So NPR set out to create a more comprehensive national count.
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Some years, heat-related deaths can top 10,000.
The true figure could be even higher, says Adams, because of some limitations in the data and the conservative nature of our analysis.