Heat in the place

Saturday Guardian’s editorial about global warming had it correct, but it forgot about health: “This week’s weather event was just a hint about how much climate extremes will impact our communities, infrastructure, the economy, and the environment.”

Where was health? Nobody cares about their health until they lose it. Then it’s a-pitying and a-wailing and a-sobbing.

So how is the heating up of the planet going to affect health? I take it you prefer heat to cold? We do not know about cold down here. We know about walking on the shady side of the street. We have to learn about walking on the sunny side when up north or down south, although we are not much into heading South, looking for jobs and coolness as yet. The way things are looking, though, Guyana and Brazil might be the new USA and Canada.

Heat is a leading health threat. The planet is heating up. We all know that. We feel it in T&T almost every day now. The figures are illustrative. The temperature of the earth’s air increased by two degrees Fahrenheit (F) between 1850 and 2020. That may not sound like much until you realise that an increase of just two degrees in body temperature is a fever. Earth has a fever, and it’s killing people.

In the last 20 years, heat caused an increase in deaths for people over 65 years of age by 85 per cent causing around half a million unexpected early deaths, about half in Asia and a third in Europe.

Flooding is dramatic, but it is the heat that causes the majority of weather-related deaths. Heat worsens underlying illnesses like obesity, heart, diabetes, mental health, and asthma. It increases the risk of accidents and encourages the transmission of infectious diseases like dengue by increasing mosquito populations. And simple heatstroke is a medical emergency with a high death rate.

Our body, like any machine, produces heat, and heat damages the machine. The human body can only take just so much heating up and does not function well outside of a narrow range of temperatures. It can only bear extremes for short periods. That’s why we try to decrease fever when ill.

Excess heat has to be eliminated, and that can only be done if we are in a cooling environment. High surrounding temperatures, high humidity, low breeze, and inappropriate clothing create a barrier to our body’s ability to lose heat.

The strain put on the body as it tries to cool itself stresses the heart and kidneys and raises the heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, blood sugar, stress hormones, and nervousness. As the body heats up, it tries to retain water, decreasing urination and damaging the kidneys. After some time, heat exhaustion and heat stroke appear.

A nice illustration of how heat affects illness is that asthma, common in T&T and which is increasing all over the world due to pollution, in turn related to the heating up.

One of the triggers for asthma is pollen. The increase in temperature causes trees to release more pollen and to produce more pollen-producing trees. The increase in thunderstorms from the overly humidified atmosphere means heavy rains and wind that break up pollen into smaller pieces that travel longer distances, across the Atlantic, for example, and enable those particles to delve deeper into the lungs and cause pathology.

High temperatures cause wildfires, which increase particle pollution, another trigger, but which also promotes indoor mould growth, yet another trigger for wheezing.

Even treatment contributes to climate change. The inhalers that are used to treat asthma release a greenhouse gas that is more powerful than carbon dioxide and raises the temperature.

The result is an increase in asthma all over the world. Asthma is the second leading cause of respiratory-related deaths worldwide. It’s common in T&T, especially in children. In 2019, asthma caused almost half a million deaths. The risk of asthma increases by five per cent for every two degrees Fahrenheit increase in the planet’s temperature.

While we are waiting for the Government to act by regulating emissions and setting heat standards that protect workers from excessive heat by requiring breaks, water access, and emergency procedures to prevent heat-related illnesses, which, as we all know, will never happen, take in front.

Use common sense. Avoid outdoor activity during the hottest part of the day. Walk in the shade. Remove that dotish tie and long-sleeved shirt. Drink a glass of water every hour. If you feel safe in your home, open the windows at night. During the day, block direct sunlight entering the room.

And electric fans seem to be useful even when using A/C. A combination of both fan and A/C makes the room about 4 degrees F cooler than A/C alone.

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