At least a dozen people in New York City have died since 2014 because they didn’t have air conditioning, according to a new report by the city Health Department, with hundreds of additional fatalities likely being linked to a lack of home cooling every year.
The heat mortality report was released on the heels of a heat dome that brought 100-degree temperatures to the city two weeks ago. It also comes as the Trump administration has threatened to slash funding for a program known as LIHEAP that helps low-income families pay for heating and cooling costs at a time when New York officials say the city is experiencing a resurgence of heat deaths because of climate change.
The new report counted deaths in two ways. First, it recorded the number of people whose death certificates listed heat stress as the cause of death. Second, it looked at the total number of deaths in the city during heat waves and calculated how many “excess” deaths were likely hastened by high temperatures annually. All told, it found that heat directly caused 49 deaths since 2014 and contributed to 525 additional fatalities every year.
In both cases, having no access to air conditioning was a significant factor.
