Working in Lanzarote at 33 degrees or more skyrockets mortality

The Ministry of Health activates this Monday a more precise map to measure the impact of heat on health, now divided into more than 180 geographical areas, each of which has an associated maximum temperature threshold from which mortality skyrockets, which in Las Palmas is 33º C or slightly more, and a series of measures to avoid it.

The new map maintains the 52 provincial reference units that the previous ones had, one for each provincial capital plus the autonomous cities, but this year it adds as a novelty more than a hundred meteo-health zones, areas of territory that maintain a homogeneous temperature behavior and of which there may be several in a single province.

Thus, the map of studied areas rises from 52 to 182, as contemplated in the National Plan of Preventive Actions of the Effects of Excess Temperatures on Health, which the Ministry has been using for more than 20 years to calculate the effects of heat on health and which will be in force -at least, since it can be extended if circumstances require it- until September 30.

Since May 16, alerts have been activated at the provincial level, since the Interministerial Commission for the effective application of the National Plan of Preventive Actions of the Effects of Excess Temperatures on Health decided to postpone the implementation of the new meteo-health areas until today.

For each of these areas, and with the information provided daily by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), the plan assigns a maximum temperature threshold from which the harmful effects of heat skyrocket and that, given the enormous geographical variability of Spain, are not the same everywhere.

Thus, the plan reserves the highest limits for the Andalusian capitals (which range from 35.5 degrees in Almería and 37.2 in Málaga to 40.5 in Seville and 41.4 in Córdoba, the highest in all of Spain), Extremaduran (37.2 in Cáceres and 40 in Badajoz) and the Murcian (38.8).

In Castilla-La Mancha, they move between 36 in Cuenca, 37.9 in Toledo and 38.1 in Ciudad Real; in Aragón, the maximum threshold is Zaragoza (38) compared to 36.7 in Teruel and 34.5 in Huesca and in Cataluña, Lleida has the highest value (37.9) and Barcelona the lowest (31).

Madrid has 35.6 degrees assigned; La Rioja 34.5 and Navarra, 34.4; in Galicia there is the greatest variability, with 27.5 in A Coruña but 37.4 in Ourense; in Castilla y León, the risk threshold is 36.1 degrees in Zamora, 36.9 in Valladolid and 35.3 in Salamanca, which decreases to values that are around 33 in the rest.

The same 33 degrees or slightly more are set for Araba and Bizkaia, Las Palmas, Baleares, Ceuta and Melilla, and a few tenths less in Alicante (31.8) and Castellón (32.8). The lowest values are Cantabria (26.6) and Asturias (26.4).

For each degree that the ambient temperature exceeds those thresholds, the risk of mortality attributable to high temperatures grows between 9.1% and 10.7%, that is, for each day that there is an episode of extreme heat, mortality increases, on average, by 3 deaths per day.

Depending on the number of days in which these thresholds are exceeded, the plan determines four levels of risk, ranging from 'Level 0' to 'Level 3', each of which carries a series of measures to coordinate all the agents involved, from the different ministries and regional authorities to health professionals and social services.