The Health Effects of Extreme Heat

When W. Larry Kenny, a professor of physiology at Pennsylvania State University, began studying how extreme heat could harm humans, his work was hit by a disaster where temperatures reached 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Focused on workers in the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station.

Over the next few decades, Dr. Kenny has been investigating how heat-stressed environments affect different people. Soccer players, soldiers in protective clothing, long-distance runners in Sahara, etc.

But lately, his work has focused on a more mundane subject: ordinary people. Do everyday things. As climate change devastates the planet.

Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings were implemented on Monday in most of the eastern endorheic of the United States, following a record-breaking weekend in the southwestern part of the country. According to the National Weather Service, the heat will move further northeast in the next few days to the upper Mississippi Valley, the western part of the Great Lakes, and the Ohio Valley.

Now that intense heat waves are affecting the Earth’s belt with terrifying regularity, scientists are digging into how living in a hotter world can make us sick and kill us. The goal is to better understand how more people will suffer from fever-related illnesses and how often and severe their suffering will be. And understand how to better protect the most vulnerable people.

One thing is certain, according to scientists, is that heat waves over the last two decades do not adequately predict the risks faced in the coming decades. Already, the link between greenhouse gas emissions and hot and humid temperatures is so clear that Some researchers say Before humans begin to warm the Earth, it may not be long before trying to determine if today’s most extreme heat waves could have occurred two centuries ago. I couldn’t have any of them.

Unless global warming slows, the hottest heat waves many have ever experienced will simply become their new summer standard, said Matthew Hoover, a climate scientist at Purdue University. Stated. “It won’t be something you can escape.”

What is difficult for scientists to identify is how these climate changes affect human health and well-being on a large scale, especially many are already suffering, but lack good data. What happens in developing countries? .. Heat stress is the product of numerous factors such as humidity, the sun, wind, hydration, clothing, and physical fitness, and causes a variety of harms that make it difficult to accurately predict future effects.

Dr. Hoover also said that there is not enough research on living full-time in a warmer world, rather than experiencing the occasional roasting summer. “We don’t know what the long-term consequences of getting up every day, working three hours in almost deadly heat, sweating crazy, and going home.” He said.

The increasing urgency of these issues is attracting researchers, such as Dr. Kenny, who did not always consider themselves climate scientists. In a recent study, he and his colleagues placed young, healthy men and women in specially designed rooms, where they rowed exercise bikes at low intensity. The researchers then dialed up heat and humidity.

They began to dangerously overheat subjects at a “wet-bulb” temperature (a measure that explains both heat and toughness) that was much lower than expected based on previous theoretical estimates by climate scientists. I found.

In fact, under steam bath conditions, our bodies absorb heat from the environment faster than we sweat and cool our bodies. “Unfortunately, for humans, we can’t sweat any more to catch up,” said Dr. Kenny.

Heat is the most devastating and intimate climate change, destroying not only landscapes, ecosystems and infrastructure, but also the depth of the individual human body.

Heat victims often die alone in their own homes. Apart from heat stroke, it can cause cardiovascular collapse and renal failure.It damages our organs and cells, and even our organs and cells DNA.. The harm is very old and very young, and high blood pressure, asthma, Multiple sclerosis And other conditions.

When mercury is high, we are not very effective at work. Our thinking and motor function are impaired.Excessive fever is also greater crime, anxiety, depression and suicide..

The strain on the body can be surprisingly personal. George Havenith, director of the Center for Environmental Ergonomics Research at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, recalled many years ago an experiment with a large number of subjects. They wore the same clothes and did the same job for an hour in the heat of 95 degrees and the humidity of 80 percent. But in the end, their body temperature ranged from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 102.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Much of the work we do is trying to understand why one person is on one side of the spectrum and the other is on the other side,” he said. ..

Vidhya Venogopal, a professor of environmental health at the University of Sri Ramachandra in Chennai, India, has been studying how heat affects workers in steel plants, car factories and brick kilns in India for many years. Many of them suffer from kidney stones caused by severe dehydration.

An encounter 10 years ago was with her. She met a steel worker who had worked 8-12 hours for 20 years near the furnace. When she asked him how old he was, he said 38-40.

She was convinced she was misunderstanding. His hair was half white. His face shrank. He didn’t look younger than 55.

So she asked how old his child was and how old he was when he got married. Math has been checked out.

“For us, that was a turning point,” said Dr. Venogopal. “That’s when we started thinking, fever ages people.”

Adelaide M. Rusambili, a researcher at the University of Aga Khan in Kenya, is investigating the effects of heat on pregnant women and newborns in Kilifi County, on the coast of Kenya. In the community there, women draw water for their families. This means walking for long periods of time in the sun, even during pregnancy. Studies have linked heat exposure to preterm and underweight babies.

According to Dr. Lusambili, the most tragic story is about a woman who suffered after childbirth. Walking long distances with a one-day-old baby can cause blisters on the baby’s body and mouth, making breastfeeding difficult for some.

She said it was enough to wonder if climate change is reversing the progress that Africa has made in reducing newborn and infant mortality.

Ollie Jay, a professor of heat and health at the University of Sydney, finds more sustainable defenses for society, given that many people do not have access to air conditioning and consume large amounts of electricity to heat the planet. It states that it is necessary.

Dr. Jay studied how the body reacts when sitting nearby FanWearing wet clothes Sponge down with water.In one project he Bangladesh sewing factory In his lab, he tested low-cost methods to keep workers safe, such as rooftop greening, fans, and planned water outages.

Humans have the ability to adapt to hot environments. Your heart rate will drop. More blood is pumped with each stroke. More sweat glands are activated. But scientists mainly understand how our bodies adapt to heat in a controlled laboratory setting, rather than in the real world where many can get in and out of air-conditioned homes and cars. Yes, said Dr. Jay.

And even in the lab, inducing such changes requires exposing people to unpleasant tensions for weeks and hours a day, and did just that on his subject. Dr. Jay said.

“It’s not particularly fun,” he said. There are few practical solutions for a stuffy future life. Or it’s becoming more and more oppressive to people in some places. More serious changes in the adaptability of the body occur only on the time scale of human evolution.

When asked about her work on Indian workers, Dr. Venugopal complains, “India is a hot country, so what’s the big deal?”

No one asks what is important to get fever, but heat stroke puts the body in a similar state.

“It’s human physiology,” said Dr. Venogopal. “You can’t change that.”