Human physiology evolved to function best in an outside temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (F). Any temperature above 85 degrees F. means trouble. People used to walk on the sunny side of the street in Europe. Not anymore. As in the tropics, shade is the name of the game. Personal experience, polar bears and scientific evidence confirm that temperatures are rising everywhere, with record-setting heat waves occurring more frequently and lasting longer.
Climate change is real.
The dangers of heat on older people are well recognised. The dangers on pregnant women and children are less well known but just as dangerous. Pregnant women, with their heightened metabolism and increased body mass, generate more heat than usual. Increases in temperature can stimulate premature births. Premature babies are sicker than term babies and prone to long-term health problems.
Heat affects infants and children more than adults. Their smaller bodies, already running at a higher metabolic rate, heat up more quickly and they have less capacity to release heat from sweating. They also may have difficulty seeking out cooler environments or getting water to drink without relying on adults. Children with certain diseases like asthma and diabetes, or who are overweight, are more susceptible to heat-related illnesses.
Compounding this is poverty. Heat-related incidents are more common and more serious with poor children, especially those living in town in apartment blocks designed by western-trained architects whose idea of beauty seems to be concrete, concrete and more concrete, instead of green, green and even more green.
The immediate effects of heat on children (and the younger the worse these effects become), are severe and include fainting from dehydration, seizures due to loss of salt, muscle breakdown leading to kidney failure and even death.
Apart from these immediate consequences, heat can also disrupt the development of the child in three distinct ways.
One, it causes learning loss. The best classroom temperature for learning is around 72 degrees F. Heat affects cognitive function and concentration. Heat causes slower reaction times and difficulty focusing. Hot classrooms can make students and, importantly, teachers, feel unmotivated, distracted or irritable.
Poor learning is unavoidable in these circumstances. The answer, of course, is to cool down the classroom and well-off schools do this by putting in A/C. Poorer schools suffer the consequences. Is this another reason why 50 per cent of SEA candidates fail?
We’ve long known that sleep quality is essential for learning. Heat causes poor night sleep, potentially disrupting school performance. Room temperature plays an integral role in sleep quality. As the body prepares for sleep, body temperature typically decreases, facilitating the onset of sleep. A hot bedroom prevents this, making it difficult to fall asleep. Poor sleep equals poor school performance.
Finally, the brain detects heat as a threat to well-being. This activates the stress response system. Excessive and prolonged stress during pregnancy harms the mother and may cause premature labour. The same sort of stress can disrupt the development of healthy emotional regulation circuits in the developing brain, first in the womb and then after birth, producing children who are at risk for poor mental and behavioural health. This is linked to violent crime, conflict and suicide in the appropriate environment.
Before it heats up any more, we need to urgently evaluate and fix the places where pregnant women and children spend most time. Homes, day care centres, schools, health centres, places of worship, etc, should be evaluated for their ability to protect pregnant women and children from exposure to excessive heat. Cooler environments during pregnancy should be considered part of prenatal care.
We need more green spaces in towns and a new idea of architecture more appropriate to the tropics. Trees and areas covered with vegetation not only provide shade but decrease air temperature. Cutting down healthy trees, as was done years ago on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway on the recommendation of a professor of agriculture, and at Piarco, as occurred during an American president’s visit, should be against the law if we are serious about protecting the health of pregnant women and children.
Air conditioning is no longer a luxury item. The horse doctor had it right years ago when he proposed air conditioning for horses’ stables. This child doctor is proposing air conditioning or other cooling systems for schools and health centres.
Finally, we need affordable, reliable access to the electrical power grid. An A/C is no help if it can’t be powered or if power is unaffordable. Health insurance needs to look into the preventive power of cooling systems. Keeping people healthy is less expensive and more profitable in the long run than paying for doctor’s and psychologist’s visits because children are getting sick because of excess heat.
