NPR's 2-year search for the truth about deaths from heat
Officially, around 1,700 Americans die of heat-related causes each year, but a 2-year investigation by NPR and Boston University concludes the genuine toll runs into the thousands. Reporters kept encountering evidence that the federal count missed the scale of the problem, and researchers at Boston University, including Quinn Adams, suspected the same, so together they built a statistical model to produce a better estimate. The gap matters because official numbers are what policymakers and the public rely on to judge how dangerous heat really is. Until the counting improves, the investigation argues, the country cannot see the true depth of the threat.
For you: Worth knowing when you see an official heat-death figure: the real risk on dangerously hot days is likely far larger than the recorded number suggests.
What it shows: Reported by NPR (health) and not verified by us: we could not trace this story to a published paper, so treat it as news rather than evidence we have checked.