Hotter Temperatures From Climate Change Could Increase Drug And Alcohol Hospitalizations, Researchers Suggest

Topline

A new study from Columbia University researchers found that during higher temperatures, hospitals see a larger number of drug- and alcohol-related admissions—leading to worries that as climate change warms the planet, it could also exacerbate the consequences of substance abuse and alcoholism.

Key Facts

The study, which was published in the journal Communications Medicine, examined data from 671,625 alcohol- and 721,469 substance-related disorder hospital visits across New York State over 20 years as well as daily temperatures and relative humidity over that time period.

Researchers then compared the lowest temperature recorded and the 75th percentile temperature and found a 24.6% increase in alcohol disorder-related hospitalizations.

For substance abuse (including opioids, cocaine, cannabis and sedatives), they found that with the same temperature increase, hospitalizations rose 38.8%, with cocaine hospitalizations specifically rising 37.6%, while there were various rates of increases for different opioids.

The results were consistent across age, sex and social vulnerability, though the increase was worse outside of New York City than within, according to the study.

This comes after the Earth’s hottest summer on record, according to the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service and NASA, and amid scientific consensus that human industrialization is causing the Earth to warm.

Tangent

The study’s authors say the results of their research suggest the link between temperature and increased hospitalization needs to be taken into account, and that public health awareness campaigns should target their messages to warmer weather months and weeks. Senior author of the study Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, said that, “Public health interventions that broadly target alcohol and substance disorders in warmer weather” should become “a public health priority.”

Contra

The authors acknowledge their results might have actually underestimated the associations between temperature and substance use disorders because many of those suffering from the most severe disorders may have died before making it to the hospital. They hope that future research uses patients’ historical medical records to give a fuller picture. They said that further research could also study how existing health conditions might be exacerbated by alcohol or substance use combined with increased temperatures.