Horacio Riojas

Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública

Author Statistics

Papers

Citation

H-Index

i-10 index

Research Trends

Author Order

Document Type

Co-Authors

Paulo Hilário Nascimento Saldiva

Universidade de São Paulo

Antonio Gasparrini

Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

Mathilde Pascal

Santé Publique France

Olivier Chanel

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Magali Hurtado‐Díaz

i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto

Samuel Osorio

Universidade de São Paulo

Luis A. Cifuentes

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Lina Madaniyazi

Nagasaki University

Patricia Matus Correa

Universidad de Los Andes, Chile

Gabriel Carrasco-Escobar

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Cooperative Institutions

Research Network (United States)

Universidade de São Paulo

Harvard University

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Nagasaki University

Monash University

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

National Institute for Environmental Studies

Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública

Author Statistics

Papers

Citation

H-Index

i-10 index

Research Field

Mortality burden and economic loss attributable to cold and heat in Central and South America

Environmental Epidemiology (2024)

Aurelio Tobı́as Carmen Íñiguez Magali Hurtado‐Díaz Horacio Riojas Luis A. Cifuentes

Background: We quantify the mortality burden and economic loss attributable to nonoptimal temperatures for cold and heat in the Central and South American countries in the Multi-City Multi-Country (MCC) Collaborative Research Network. Methods: We collected data for 66 locations from 13 countries in Central and South America to estimate location-specific temperature–mortality associations using time-series regression with distributed lag nonlinear models. We calculated the attributable deaths for cold and heat as the 2.5th and 97.5th temperature percentiles, above and below the minimum mortality temperature, and used the value of a life year to estimate the economic loss of delayed deaths. Results: The mortality impact of cold varied widely by country, from 9.64% in Uruguay to 0.22% in Costa Rica. The heat-attributable fraction for mortality ranged from 1.41% in Paraguay to 0.01% in Ecuador. Locations in arid and temperate climatic zones showed higher cold-related mortality (5.10% and 5.29%, respectively) than those in tropical climates (1.71%). Arid and temperate climatic zones saw lower heat-attributable fractions (0.69% and 0.58%) than arid climatic zones (0.92%). Exposure to cold led to an annual economic loss of $0.6 million in Costa Rica to $472.2 million in Argentina. In comparison, heat resulted in economic losses of $0.05 million in Ecuador to $90.6 million in Brazil. Conclusion: Most of the mortality burden for Central and South American countries is caused by cold compared to heat, generating annual economic losses of $2.1 billion and $290.7 million, respectively. Public health policies and adaptation measures in the region should account for the health effects associated with nonoptimal temperatures.

Distributed lag

10.1097/ee9.0000000000000335

Cite

Citations (1)