This is a human-written story voiced by AI. Got feedback? Take our survey . (See our AI policy here .)

England isn’t renowned for its weather. But just a few centuries ago, climate change–fueled conditions may have been so bad that they put children’s health at risk.

Calcium mineralization in the teeth and skeletons of people who lived in rural northern England suggests that children growing up during the height of the Little Ice Age routinely developed vitamin D deficiencies, researchers report November 5 in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology . In the worst cases, these deficiencies developed into rickets, a bone disorder that can occur when people don’t get enough ultraviolet light.

Previous skeletal studies suggest that rickets became more common among Europeans during the 18th and 19th centuries. One culprit may have been the Industrial Revolution, when many Europeans lived in UV-poor polluted cities and often worked indoors.…