The Importance of Public Health Alerts for Heat Waves

Public health is all around us from the water that we drink to alerting us when pollution is too high in the air. Many public health departments are putting together a structure for defining what they would consider high heat. New York City has criteria for predicting a heat index which reflects both heat temperature as well as humidity. And if they have a heat index of over 35 degrees, for example, centigrade for over two days, that alerts their system.