Tens of millions of Americans have been living with stifling, dangerous heat this summer. A new analysis shows how much worse it is for people living in urban environments.
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Angel Hsu, a public policy professor at the University of North Carolina, published a study in 2021 looking at disproportionate exposures to heat islands between different communities.
“What we found is that within a city, there can be huge differences in those temperatures and the heat exposure that various residents experience depending on their socio-demographic background,” she said. “Americans in major U.S. cities living two times below the poverty line are exposed to almost a full degree higher Celsius of this urban heat island effect compared to their wealthier counterparts. And the same thing goes with people of color.”