Heatwaves can speed up ageing, study suggests

Repeated exposure to heatwaves is accelerating ageing in people, according to a study.

- Damian Carrington

The impact is broadly comparable with the damage smoking, alcohol use, poor diet or limited exercise can have on health, the researchers said.

Extreme temperatures are increasingly common owing to the climate crisis, potentially causing widespread and long-lasting damage to the health of billions of people, the scientists warned.

The research represents a "paradigm shift" in the understanding of the extent and severity of heat's impact on health, which can be lifelong, according to one expert.

It was already known that heatwaves cause short-term spikes in early deaths with, for example, almost 600 premature deaths linked to the June heatwave in England. But the new analysis is one of the first to assess the longer-term impact.

The researchers followed 25,000 people in Taiwan for 15 years and compared their exposure to heatwaves with their biological age, a measure of overall health.

They found, for example, that biological age increased by about nine days for people who experienced four more heatwave days over a twoyear period. Manual workers, who tend to spend more time outside, were strongly affected, with their biological age increasing by 33 days.