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Rising temperatures around the world are having an impact on people's health.
Bild: Manu Fernandez/AP/dpa
It was already known that heat damages health in the short term. Now a new study suggests that repeated heat stress also affects people's ageing process.
Strong and repeated exposure to heat accelerates the ageing process in humans, as a new study suggests. According to the researchers, the effects are roughly comparable to the damage that smoking, alcohol consumption, poor diet or lack of exercise can have on health.
Because extreme temperatures are becoming more frequent due to the climate crisis, they could potentially cause far-reaching and long-lasting damage to the health of billions of people, the scientists warn.
It was already known that heatwaves lead to short-term peaks in premature deaths. For example, almost 600 premature deaths were linked to a heatwave in England in June, as the British Guardian writes. However, the new analysis is one of the first to assess the longer-term effects.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, used the results of a range of medical tests, including blood pressure, inflammation, cholesterol and lung, liver and kidney function, to determine the biological age of each person in the study. The researchers compared this with each person's actual age to determine whether their exposure to heatwaves was associated with faster ageing.
Paul Beggs from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who was not part of the research team, told the Guardian: "Many of us have experienced heatwaves and escaped unscathed - or so we thought. Research now shows that exposure to heatwaves affects the rate at which we age."
For the study, the researchers observed 25,000 people in Taiwan over a period of 15 years and compared their exposure to heatwaves with their biological age, a measure of general health. They found, for example, that the biological age of people who experienced four additional days of heatwaves over a two-year period increased by around nine days. Workers who tend to spend more time outdoors were severely affected, with their biological age increasing by 33 days.
This increase in biological age may seem small. However, the scientists pointed out that this only covered a period of two years. The effects of heatwaves on the ageing process over the entire human lifespan are currently being investigated.
According to the researchers, the impact on the global population could be very large. This is because all people suffer from heatwaves and a higher biological age is a strong indicator of an increased risk of death.
