People of all ages -?not just the elderly -?are more at risk of death and emergency room visits as the earth warms, a recent study has found. The?study, published this month by researchers at Brown University and the Rhode Island Department of Health in the journal?Environmental Health Perspectives, focused on the population of Rhode Island. Researchers found that it didn?t need to be that hot for people to start visiting the ER in higher numbers ? according to the study, a temperature of 75 degrees compared to 65 made heat-related emergency room visits increase by 3.3 percent. But, as it got hotter, the jump in visits was more acute: on days with highs of 85 degrees, ER visits jumped 23.9 percent compared to days with highs of 75 degrees. In addition, Rhode Island?s death rate increased by 4 percent on 85-degree days compared to 75-degree days.?Our primary finding is that as temperatures increase, the number of emergency room visits and deaths increase,? Samantha Kingsley, a Brown University public health graduate student and lead author of the study, said in a?statement. ?But people were going to the hospital for heat-related reasons at temperatures below what we would typically consider extreme.? Read More?at www.hinkprogress.org