A hidden health impact of heat: exacerbated anemia in India
研究利用印度近十年健康、营养和气候数据，分析热暴露与贫血的关系，发现高温导致儿童、女性和男性贫血风险增加，并估算升温2°C将带来约42亿美元的经济损失。
Global warming is having increasingly negative health effects, particularly in relatively poor and hot countries such as India. These impacts are partly due to the direct effect of high temperatures on the human body, and partly due to vector-borne diseases and reduced food availability. While numerous harmful health effects of high temperatures have been established, there is very little research into their possible impact on anemia, a medical condition affecting 25% of the global population and 43 % of people in India. Using health, nutrition and climate data, we analyze the relationship between heat exposure and anemia in India over the past decade. We match blood hemoglobin measurements from nearly 265,000 children, 914,000 women and 140,000 men to two different measurements of exposure to heat, based on air temperature and wet-bulb globe temperature respectively. We find that heat exposure in the 30 days preceding blood measurement is associated with anemia in these three population groups. Moreover, the mechanisms responsible do not seem to be related to nutritional deficiencies, while direct effects and malaria could explain part of the relationship between temperature and anemia. Finally, we estimate the number of extra anemia cases induced by a + 2 ∘ C increase in air temperature, which has an associated cost of around 4.2 billion US dollars, i.e., 0.11 % of Indian GDP.