With heat waves, an increased risk for heart problems, new research shows

By Victoria St. Martin, Inside Climate News

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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As a cardiologist in the largest city in the nation’s fastest-warming region, Ethan Katznelson has daily, first-hand knowledge of how high temperatures can put stress on the human heart.

Katznelson, who practices at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, regularly sees the cardiovascular stress suffered by patients who live in homes without air conditioning, or climb steep stairs in multi-story apartment buildings with no elevators, or rely on public assistance to help cope with the heat in a city where residents feel almost 10 degrees hotter than their suburban neighbors because of the urban heat island effect.

He’s long understood the threat—but has wondered whether the same can be said of “the average doctor.”

So he and a team of research associates set out to make that case as powerfully as possible, examining roughly 500 observational studies of the effects of high temperatures, extreme weather and wildfire smoke—all factors amplified by climate change—on cardiovascular problems.