Dallas has been warming for decades as climate change turns up the heat. And the rising temperatures — which regularly climb above 100 degrees in the summer — are threatening the city’s youngest inhabitants.
That’s according to a new study, which finds that heat-related illness is on the rise among children in Dallas. Emergency room visits related to heat soared by 170 percent from 2012 to 2023 at two major hospitals associated with the Children’s Health medical system in Dallas and nearby Plano.
Hotter days were associated with more emergency room visits, the research found. There were an additional 0.64 heat-related illness incidents per 10,000 total emergency department encounters for every degree Fahrenheit that daily high temperatures rose between May and September.
The study was published in the August edition of the journal Academic Pediatrics.
