Cold homes in Australia: Questioning our assumptions about prevalence

Australia is considered by many to be a warm climate country and hence winter cold and its health effects are often overlooked. The majority of the Australian population live in temperate climate regions, which are heating -dominated and experience cold wintertime conditions. The prevalence of cold in Australian homes has to date been rarely measured or estimated, and the few studies that do are based on proxy data that estimate a low prevalence (around 5 %). This paper tests these proxy measures, using high resolution temperature data on indoor temperature from 100 homes across temperate Australia. The data were assessed using the World Health Organization's Housing and Health guideline for minimum indoor temperature (18 degrees C), which provides an internationally recognised benchmark for defining cold in homes. Across the sampled homes, 81 % were below 18 degrees C on average across the whole of winter (June-August 2022). Average winter indoor temperatures were 16.5 +/- 2.7 degrees C across all homes, with no significant difference between locations. These early findings suggest that the problem of unhealthily cold homes in Australia is likely to be significantly more prevalent than previously estimated. Far from affecting 5 % of Australian households, the affected population may be 10 times this value. These initial findings have important implications for how we model health impacts and develop policy. This early release data from a recently commenced large environmental monitoring project is of timely importance. It challenges our understanding of the prevalence of cold housing in Australia context, flagging the pressing need to increase policy attention in advance of winter.

Automated summary

Australia's cold winter climate and its health effects are often overlooked due to the perception of the country as having a warm climate. However, the majority of the population live in temperate regions that experience cold winters. Previous estimates of cold prevalence in Australian homes have been low, but this study using high-resolution temperature data shows that 81% of sampled homes had temperatures below the internationally recognized benchmark for defining cold. These initial findings challenge previous estimates and have important implications for health modeling and policy development.