You’ve probably noticed that temperatures are, on the whole, getting higher across the world. The effects of climate change have included melting glaciers and more extreme weather, but they’ve also been felt a little closer to home — literally, in this case. Researchers have explored the connection between rising temperatures and the human body already, but a new study zeroed in on one aspect of that: how heat affects how we age.
A study published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change sought to map out the relationship between climate change and human aging. The researchers used data on almost 25,000 people in Taiwan taken between 2008 and 2022. They found that “[e]ach interquartile range increase in the cumulative exposure to heatwaves” saw an increase in the difference between the subjects’ biological age and their chronological age.
That wasn’t the only way in which these scientists observed that heat affected aging; they also noted that “manual workers, rural residents and participants from communities with fewer air conditioners were more susceptible to the health impacts.” As The Guardian‘s Damian Carrington pointed out, this study differs from other recent explorations of extreme heat and human aging by taking a longer view of the subject.
The Guardian reports that the researchers are now exploring even longer-term effects of heat on the body. “If heatwave exposure accumulates for several decades, the health impact will be much greater than we have reported,” Dr. Cui Guo, one of the paper’s authors, told The Guardian.
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Logistical chaos, extreme heat and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds? That’s an immediate no.If there’s any grounds for optimism in this new study, it’s that it also contains evidence of humans’ adaptability. The authors found hints of “a gradual population-level adaptation across all heatwave indicators.” That doesn’t mean that they aren’t concerned about their findings; as they wrote, “the health impacts of long-term exposure to heatwaves remain significant and warrant continued attention.”
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