2024-02-08 17:20:03
More than 5,000 people died from heat during the summer of 2023, the French Public Health Agency (SPF) announced on Thursday February 8. “Three deaths out of a hundred observed during the summer are attributable to heat, which represents a little more than 5,000 deaths”summarized Guillaume Boulanger, researcher at SPF, during a press conference on Thursday.
This estimate – which stands at precisely 5,167 deaths – concerns the entire summer of 2023 and not only the four heatwave episodes. Over these periods alone, around 1,500 deaths are attributed to heat.
The heatwaves of 2023 were notable for the late nature of two of them: the longest in August, then a last one in September. This summer of 2023 remains, despite long periods of gloomy weather, the fourth hottest ever observed in France – the first measurements dating back to 1900. But the summers marked by a significant number of people dead due to the heat follow one another: there were almost 7,000 in 2022.
Read also: The heat wave that France suffered at the end of August 2023, unheard of since at least 1945
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“Climate change context”
“We are in a context of climate change, these exposures to heat will tend to increase over time”underlined Sébastien Denys, who deals with environmental issues at SPF.
The people most affected by these heat waves in 2023 were the oldest with 3,700 deaths who were over 75 years old. Around ten deaths at work are considered, after a census by the labor inspectorate, as possibly being linked to heat. But it is probably a ” under estimation “warned Guillaume Boulanger, explaining for example that a death can occur several days after exposure to heat and, thus, fall through the cracks of the census. “We are having trouble (…) to measure the overall burden of heat exposure in the workplace »he regretted.
Read the survey | Article reserved for our subscribers Deaths at work, a silent massacre in France
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