Heat is a ‘silent killer’
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Heat is a ‘silent killer’
January 24Kills2019 — Climate change will mean more extreme weather, including heat waves.And not a distant threat—we’re already seeing the effects now in the United States. In this week’s episode, we explore the health threat posed by severe heat and how our society needs to adapt in the decades ahead. You’ll hear from Augusta Williams, a doctoral student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who studies how extreme heat can affect our bodies and minds. She’ll explain why heat is considered a “silent killer” and how we can combat the effects of our warming world.
This episode was produced with assistance from Veritalk, a podcast from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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Learn more
Extreme heat linked with reduced cognitive performance among young adults in non-air-conditioned buildings (Harvard Chan School news)
How ‘heat islands’ can harm health (Harvard Chan School news)
Full Transcript
AUGUSTA WILLIAMS: So my research all focuses on the impacts of extreme heat on human health. A lot of my research is focused here in Boston and Cambridge, which is fun. And then we further examine the influence of the built environment and its role in either mitigating or exacerbating extreme heat exposures and the resulting health impacts on the populations of Boston and Cambridge.
ANNA FISHER-PINKERT: Can you tell me a little bit about, like, why is heat bad for our health?
AUGUSTA WILLIAMS: So heat is one of the most well-understood public health impacts of climate change. There’s been a wide variety of research that has shown that heat is one of the largest killers of all meteorological phenomena, more so than floods or tornadoes and hurricanes, which a lot of people are surprised by since a lot of those other weather events look much scarier than extreme heat does. But it’s really a silent killer is what a lot of public health researchers call it because you can’t see it.
But it’s extremely dangerous. There’s been a lot of research that has shown that heat has a role in exacerbating cardiovascular disease, respiratory health outcomes, even renal in diabetes complications, outcomes related to pregnancy and the health of newborn babies, and even things like our cognitive function, our sleep, and our productivity. So there’s a wide range of health outcomes that heat influences and really across all sectors of society.
ANNA FISHER-PINKERT: Tell me some of the medical conditions that could be exacerbated by heat.
AUGUSTA WILLIAMS: So things like cardiovascular outcomes related to either heart attacks, or heart failure can be complicated during extreme heat exposures. People with diabetes are more prone to heat stress or have complications related to their diabetes condition. Respiratory outcomes, especially asthma– that’s an important one, because also during heat waves, there’s usually high air pollution rates that also then trigger asthma, especially in vulnerable populations, like children and the elderly.
ANNA FISHER-PINKERT: So you mentioned earlier that there are these cognitive effects of heat. What do we know about that?
AUGUSTA WILLIAMS: So there’s been some great research happening here at Harvard on this, as well as elsewhere. My team recently published a study that was led by Dr. Memo Cedeno, where we actually worked in the dorms here on campus at Harvard and tracked students for 12 days. Half of the students we worked with had access to air-conditioning in their dorm rooms, and the other half did not.
And we found that during this time, we were able to see before, during, and after a heat wave. And those without air-conditioning experienced significant reductions in their cognitive performance. And we measured that with two tests. One was a color word test that the students completed, and the other was an addition and subtraction test. And on both of these, saw impairments in their performance when they didn’t have access to air-conditioning during the heat wave.
This sounds like the research of a fifth grader who rides the little bus.