![]() “Phoenix really is the model for what we’ll be seeing in other places,” said researcher Jennifer Ailshire, a native of the desert city now at the University of Southern California's Leonard Davis School of Gerontology where she studies how environmental factors affect health and aging. Sign up here and get news that is important for you to your inbox. We're making it easier for you to find stories that matter with our new newsletter - The 4Front. Temperatures this year were already hitting the high 90s the first week of April. Such fatalities are so common that Arizona’s largest county keeps a weekly online tally during the six-month hot season from May through October. Situated in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix and its suburbs are ground zero for heat-associated deaths in the U.S. They’re adopting rules for disconnecting electricity, mandating when to switch on communal air conditioning and improving communication with at-risk people living alone. ![]() Now, the heat dangers long known in greater Phoenix are becoming familiar nationwide as global warming creates new challenges to protect the aged.įrom the Pacific Northwest to Chicago to North Carolina, health clinics, utilities and local governments are being tested to keep older people safe when temperatures soar. ![]() In America’s hottest big metro, older people like the Sun Lakes mobile home resident accounted for most of the 77 people who died last summer in broiling heat inside their homes, almost all without air conditioning. Efforts to revive her failed, and her death was ruled environmental heat exposure aggravated by heart disease and diabetes. Paramedics summoned to an Arizona retirement community last summer found an 80-year-old woman slumped inside her mobile home, enveloped in the suffocating 99-degree heat she suffered for days after her air conditioner broke down.
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