Study: Air Conditioners Save Lives

Getting people out of their sweltering homes and into air-conditioned settings, even if only for a little while, can save lives.

That’s the simple lesson from the Midwest heat wave last year that killed more than 700 people in Chicago, according to a study by public health authorities.

“A lot of the people who were hooked into some city service already - Meals on Wheels or visiting nurses - still died,” said Carol Rubin, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Just because the Meals on Wheels were being delivered doesn’t mean that the prevention message was being delivered.”

A study of the Chicago deaths published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine found that those most likely to die were socially isolated, ill or disabled elderly people.

The study’s authors estimated more than half the deaths could have been prevented by an air conditioner in the home. An air conditioner in the building lobby or the ability to get to an air-conditioned environment for a few hours a day, such as a movie theater, also helped. Fans apparently made no difference.

Simply opening city-sponsored “cooling centers” was not effective by itself, said Dr. Knox H. Todd, co-author of an accompanying editorial.

“People who are shut in and aren’t able to get out of their homes are the ones who are in trouble,” said Todd.