Japan Saw Record Number Treated For Heatstroke in Hottest-Ever Summer

More than 100,000 people were sent to hospitals due to heatstroke in Japan between May 1 and Sunday, according to preliminary data from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Bloomberg, via Japan Times: The number is the most on record, according to NHK. Transport to hospitals of patients linked to heatstroke over the period rose almost 3% to 100,143 from a year earlier as Japan saw its national temperature record broken twice in a matter of days. The country's average temperature during this summer was the highest since the statistic began being compiled in 1898, the nation's weather agency said last month.

Heat waves around the world are being made stronger and more deadly due to human-caused climate change. Government officials in August pledged to boost public health protections and encouraged the installation of more air conditioners in school gymnasiums and the use of cooling centers in communal spaces like libraries. New rules came into effect this summer that require employers to take adequate measures to protect workers from extreme temperatures.

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[sdinfoserv]

3% this, 3% next, 3%, the year after... suddenly it's almost 10% higher - but only slightly more than the previous, so again, you dismiss.
That's called a trend over time. little by little. Meanwhile, you frogs on a hotplate continue to deny reality.

Tedious heat

[shanen]

You're arguing with a fool at best but more likely a worse argument with a troll's sock puppet. And you propagated the vacuous Subject, too.

For what it's worth I've lived most of my life in Japan, and even within that brief time the numbers show that the weather is becoming steadily more extreme. In particular the duration of pleasant weather between unpleasant summer and unpleasant winter used to be a couple of months and in recent years it's only a couple of weeks and sometimes only a few days. However Ja

Re:Maybe soon cold deaths won't outnumber heat 7:1

[ArchieBunker]

TSIA.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. News at 11.
How is that "climate change is going to make hurricanes more frequent" going? Or...didn't you guys change that to "more intense" now? How's that one going?

The numbers speak for themselves. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo... [noaa.gov]

But hey if the increasing numbers hurt your brain we can always stop funding the agency that keeps track.

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[shanen]

Mod parent Funny and sad.

Solution approach question: Anyone have reportable experiences with those wristbands that are supposed to warn you if you're getting too close to heat-related illness? I'm definitely thinking of buying one before next summer. Judging by this year, I think that means around next April...

Just saw my first reference to them in a Japanese book published this year. It was about work safety on construction sites outdoors. The book did not mention the fan jackets, which surprised me. I saw

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[Anonymous Coward]

You'd know all about posting links that don't say what you claim silly MAGA.

There are periods in the past with both better and worse hurricane counts and intensities.

Nobody expects someone like you to understand the numbers.

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[argStyopa]

The slashdot commissars are active today, I see.

Don't you guys have reddits to moderate?

Buy!

[SlashbotAgent]

Time to buy stock in Japanese air conditioner companies!

What are the top selling brands in Japan, Panasonic, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba???

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[TwistedGreen]

Daikin

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[AmiMoJo]

Daikin and Fujitsu too.

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[shanen]

I think those are the big two, but now I wonder if Daikin is available outside Japan. Perhaps under a different label?

Pretty much sure all of them are reversible heat pumps these days and I'm not so sure those should be described as air conditioners in English.

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[AmiMoJo]

You can get Daikin ones in the UK. The terminology in English is a bit unclear but I'd can it an air conditioner.

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[shanen]

Don't you wish you could fix your typos on Slashdot? At least for a short while.

But now you have me confused about what they call them in Japan... I'll need to visit an electronics store and pay attention to those displays.

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[AmiMoJo]

Pretty sure they are just "eakon" in Japanese.

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[shanen]

I'm going to have to see how they write it, but definitely not in Romaji. However if if the original word was based on a foreign language there are lots of cases where the Japanese meaning is not closely related to the source meaning.

Funny joke? There was a long time when I had the impression that the Japanese called them PET bottles because they used them to discourage pets from pissing on telephone poles.

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[AmiMoJo]

It's written in katakana, but Slashdot doesn't let you post that so I used romaji. PET is recycled separately to some extent, that's why it's often mentioned.

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[shanen]

No, I got that idea about the PET bottles because they put water in them and tie them around the base of telephone poles. Not exactly sure how it works, but apparently dogs don't want to mark the apparent wall of water?

But now I'm not sure if you know PET is from the chemical name of the kind of plastic. But I'd have to look it up to spell it correctly in English or katakana.

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[AmiMoJo]

Oh, that thing. Apparently it is believed that animals get scared when they see their own reflection in the water, so placing bottles of water near things that animals are attracted to (poles, and often in people's gardens if they have cats or monkeys and the like coming in) is supposed to keep them away.

I think it's widely understood that it doesn't really work, but is a sort of passive-aggressive signal to other people that the owner doesn't appreciate their animals coming onto their property.

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[SlashbotAgent]

now I wonder if Daikin is available outside Japan.

Daikin is available in the U.S. it is overshadowed by the Chinese Gree in the lower cost market.

-1, Ragebait/Clickbait/Trollbait/SlowNewsDay story

[SomePoorSchmuck]

It works, of course, because the stories with the highest comment count the past 3 years are consistently: climate change, energy generation/consumption (fossil v nuke v wind/geo), AI-yi-yi, and cryptocurrency.

I was there for the hottest part of the summer.

[Smonster]

It was my fifth trip there. Second during the summer months. At some point, hot is just hot. Drink plenty of water, stay out of the sun doing the height of the day, wear light hued loose fitting clothing. That works well whether is 90 F with 80% humidity or 99 F with 90% humidity. Now, if you don't have access to water and shade that is a different story. In an urban environment, where the super majority of Japanese live, practically everyone has access to shade, water on the other hand isn't only plentiful

Demographics

[timeOday]

I'm surprised they don't mention the aging population. Old people are frail.

Granted, having the hottest summer since the start of records 125 years ago is enough to explain it alone. But aging can only contribute.

What should we do about it?

[MacMann]

Every one of these reports on rising temperatures comes with the implication that something needs to be done. What should we do?

I'll see calls for heat pumps to replace fossil fuel heating, that will reduce CO2 emissions. But then we should not be allowing people to have air conditioning because that only adds to the CO2 emitted because so much of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels. But then heat pumps are air conditioners, right? Are we to expect people to suffer in the heat after getting a

Recent trip

[ukoda]

My statistical sample of one was from 10 days last month mostly in Tokyo. I had picked September in the hope that it would be past the the peak of summer and a chance to get away from the peak of winter here. It was hotter and more humid than I expected and comments from a local I was talking with is it has been a hotter summer than normal. While it didn't have the polluted smell that some big Chinese cities have there was a haze present all the time, enough that I never needed the protection from sunbur

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[MacMann]

I assume "home" for the parent post is the USA. The USA has been subsidizing BEVs longer and with greater vigor than Japan which can explain the disparity. As I'm seeing it Japan doesn't carve out electric vehicles like the federal government and state governments do in the USA. Japan has a "clean energy vehicle" subsidy that includes BEVs and fuel cell vehicles.

I don't know how popular hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are in Japan but they've apparently been far more successful there than elsewhere in the wo

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[ukoda]

Home is New Zealand, hence the comment about getting away from winter. It is worth noting New Zealand has a poor history for BEV subsidies, they didn't exist when I brought my BEV 5 years ago and we have none currently. Regardless BEVs are pretty common here now.

While in Japan I was really interested to see if I could spot my first FCEV actually moving on a road. I saw none. I didn't mention it in my post as it was possible I had seen one and not noticed it as the Mirai excels in looking boring. I w

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[hadleyburg]

Can anyone comment on the rate of adoption of FCEVs in Japan? It would be interesting to read some first hand accounts.

I've noticed hydrogen fuel vehicles in Japan, but not with private vehicles - You see hydrogen powered buses, and some other commercial vehicles.

But private vehicles have quite a different use case in Japan than in the US. Particularly in urban areas, there is a lot more transport choice in Japan.

In large urban areas like Tokyo, people might own a car in the same way as you might own a boat in the US. You probably won't use it to commute. You may use it on the weekends, but it will be partly because you enj