Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Zara Huge covers climate at Bloomberg and she recently had
Speaker 2: the opportunity to take a trip to one of the
Speaker 2: hottest places in the world. And I took an elevator
Speaker 2: and upstairs in a university building.
Speaker 3: Elevator comes out in a corner and if you turn
Speaker 3: left in Canada, there's this long, tall hallway.
Speaker 2: And all along that hallway is one of the world's
Speaker 2: largest research facilities dedicated to studying the effects of heat
Speaker 2: on the human body.
Speaker 3: And we kind of just spent the day walking through
Speaker 3: opening door number one, door number two, door number three.
Speaker 2: Behind each one, there were people doing all kinds of tests.
Speaker 1: How's that it off?
Speaker 3: It's okay.
Speaker 2: People like Janet Spencer.
Speaker 3: She's seventy five years old. She describes herself as a
Speaker 3: vet her in of the lab. She's retired. Specifically, she's
Speaker 3: a retired mediator for Canada's Human Rights Commission.
Speaker 4: I never imagined did that be a guinea pig for size?
Speaker 1: What temperature are we at? We're at thirty six degrees.
Speaker 3: So pretty warm for sure. Janet was doing what's called
Speaker 3: a passive trial, where she was just sort of hanging
Speaker 3: out in the heat. These can be full days. In March,
Speaker 3: she was there for three days straight, which meant she
Speaker 3: was sleeping in the room, and she described it as
Speaker 3: watching a ton of Netflix.
Speaker 2: When Zara met Janet, she'd only been in the lab
Speaker 2: for an hour, but she was already feeling the effects.
Speaker 4: When I started, I brought my paper to read, and
Speaker 4: I managed to read that in the first half hour.
Speaker 4: But right now, pretty much all I'm capable of is
Speaker 4: playing mindless solitary games.
Speaker 2: Help down the hall. Bob Striker was doing a very
Speaker 2: different kind of experiment.
Speaker 3: And how do you feel right now since I just
Speaker 3: saw you walking on the chunnel.
Speaker 1: For a while in the heat.
Speaker 4: I'm tired, hunted.
Speaker 2: And in another room, Lutz Suckstorf was recovering from a
Speaker 2: cycling test.
Speaker 1: Mentally, it really starts to drain you like it. Really
Speaker 1: it becomes an effort, you know, literally that one foot
Speaker 1: in front of the other. If we had another half
Speaker 1: an hour, forty five minutes, my bloody would have started
Speaker 1: to saying, no, this is no fun anymore.
Speaker 2: When Janet, Bob and Lutz spoke with Zara, that kept
Speaker 2: the mood light, but their motivations for participating in this research,
Speaker 2: and the goals of the research itself are very serious.
Speaker 2: Nearly half a million people die every year as a
Speaker 2: result of extreme heat, according to research compiled by the
Speaker 2: reinsurance company Swiss Ree. That's more than the total from hurricanes, earthquakes,
Speaker 2: and floods combined, and Zara says the real number is
Speaker 2: likely even higher.
Speaker 3: Often we're just maybe tracking the most extreme cases that
Speaker 3: are coming through hospitals. But you know, if you're dying
Speaker 3: from a heart problem that was tied to the heat,
Speaker 3: that might not necessarily be recorded as a heat death.
Speaker 3: So you know, it is a really big number that
Speaker 3: we don't even have a full grasp on.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, the researchers on the
Speaker 2: forefront of the latest science on deadly heat, why everyone's
Speaker 2: at more risk than they think, and what actually works
Speaker 2: to mitigate those risks. The Heat Lab at the University
Speaker 2: of Ottawa, the Human and Environmental Physiology Research Unit, has
Speaker 2: been around since two thousand and Over the last two decades,
Speaker 2: the lab has been at the forefront of studying human's
Speaker 2: ability to live and work in the heat.
Speaker 1: A lot of the work that I am doing is
Speaker 1: really focused on understanding the impacts of heat exposure on
Speaker 1: the health well being of the general public and markers.
Speaker 2: The man in charge is doctor Glenn Kenny. He's been
Speaker 2: studying the effects of heat on the human body for
Speaker 2: thirty five years and he says, in many ways, this
Speaker 2: is an old problem.
Speaker 1: When we think about, for example, workers, and we think
Speaker 1: about the impacts that heat has, this is not new.
Speaker 1: This is something we've known for decades.
Speaker 2: But as the climate changes, heat is only growing more extreme.
Speaker 3: It was only a couple of years ago, in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one that the Western Heat Dome, which was this
Speaker 3: really deadly heat wave hit the western part of Canada,
Speaker 3: also the western part of the US, but in Western Canada,
Speaker 3: like over six hundred people died. A lot of them
Speaker 3: were elderly, and a lot of them that were people
Speaker 3: living in their home who didn't have air conditioning and
Speaker 3: they're basically cooking in their homes, and people didn't have
Speaker 3: a way to kind of check in on them, and
Speaker 3: unfortunately a lot of them didn't realize they were too
Speaker 3: uncomfortably hot until it was too late because of their
Speaker 3: impered ability to sense it. Kenny says, to keep people safe,
Speaker 3: you need to understand how heat affects different kinds of bodies.
Speaker 3: He says that older heat guidelines have typically been based
Speaker 3: on research focused on young, healthy people who've had limited
Speaker 3: heat exposures, think a couple of hours at a time.
Speaker 3: That's where his test subjects come in. Kenny and his
Speaker 3: team use specialized equipment to measure how extreme heat can
Speaker 3: affect body temperature in simulated real world conditions.
Speaker 1: We have an apartment styled chamber where we have a bag,
Speaker 1: where we have a kitchen, a washroom, where we can
Speaker 1: bring in the patient and have them live within that
Speaker 1: chamber so that we can understand what happens to them
Speaker 1: and monitor them not only during the daytime, but also
Speaker 1: what is the impact all that heat exposure on sleep.
Speaker 2: Kenny also has another secret weapon, a one of a
Speaker 2: kind air calorimeter, which is lab uses to measure the
Speaker 2: amount of heat released from or absorbed in the body.
Speaker 1: So we did that before and after the three day exposure,
Speaker 1: so we can see if there's a decrease in my
Speaker 1: capacity to space, So is that exposure also causing deterioration
Speaker 1: in my ability through will regulate?
Speaker 2: But that's not the only data the lab is collecting.
Speaker 2: The team keeps close tabs on participants cognitive and physical performance,
Speaker 2: and records detailed updates on their temperatures.
Speaker 3: These are actually pretty uncomfortable trials. I mean, the more
Speaker 3: I was learning about it and talking with people, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I would want to do this. They
Speaker 3: do a lot of tracking of your temperature, and we
Speaker 3: may think, oh, you can take their skin temperatures right
Speaker 3: when you go to the hospital or the doctor and
Speaker 3: they check to see if you have a fever. But
Speaker 3: that's really not the best way to get a gauge
Speaker 3: of how hot your insights are. That's called a skin temperature,
Speaker 3: but it's better to get a core temperature, and there
Speaker 3: are a couple different ways they can do that, including
Speaker 3: putting something down your esophagus, which is like really intrusive,
Speaker 3: but also the more common is like a rectal pro
Speaker 3: and that was tracking their core temperature that she was
Speaker 3: sort of wearing on a fanny pack.
Speaker 2: Armed with the data from these experiments, Kenny's lab has
Speaker 2: been assessing whether the upper limit for a safe indoor
Speaker 2: temperature recommended by some Canadian officials twenty six degrees celsius
Speaker 2: or just under seventy nine degrees fahrenheit is actually safe,
Speaker 2: and they've found that for a day, it seems to be.
Speaker 2: What they're trying to figure out now is how the
Speaker 2: body responds to those temperatures over longer periods of time.
Speaker 1: When you are exposed to temperatures above twenty six degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: older adults and individuals with chronic diseases are going to
Speaker 1: start seeing increases in their level of physiological strength. But
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine that increase in temperature is
Speaker 1: a strain. Go out and exercise and keep that stress. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a stress, and that stress is essentially maintained over time.
Speaker 1: That person is going overheat. If that heat wave stays
Speaker 1: and overheating is consistent, that strain will remain.
Speaker 2: So in a warming world, how can people reduce the
Speaker 2: strains that come with extreme heat? And are all cooling
Speaker 2: options created equal? That's after the break. Here in New
Speaker 2: York where I am, when a heat wave hits, the
Speaker 2: city opens up public cooling centers. But doctor Glenn Kenny,
Speaker 2: who runs one of the world's largest heat labs at
Speaker 2: the University of Ottawa, says cooling centers alone don't totally
Speaker 2: protect against the risks of extreme heat.
Speaker 1: The problem is, upon re entering to the heat, you
Speaker 1: haven't removed all that heat from the body. Air is
Speaker 1: not a good conductor of heat unlike water, right, so
Speaker 1: one of the things upon reenter the heat, the bible
Speaker 1: actually warmed up very quickly. So the challenge is is
Speaker 1: that that person feels very well, They feel more relaxed,
Speaker 1: they feel cooler. Problem is, within a couple hours their
Speaker 1: body heats up very fast and get as hot as
Speaker 1: their non cool counterpart. So imagine they're gonna they may
Speaker 1: not adjust their behavior because essentially they feel better. So
Speaker 1: the problem is is feeling better actually masks the risk
Speaker 1: that they face because their temperatures are equally as.
Speaker 2: High Bloomberg Zara here Ge, says Another researcher, this one
Speaker 2: at the University of Sydney, who did his post doc
Speaker 2: at Kenny's lab, looked at the efficacy of fans and
Speaker 2: how they could be used in Bangladeshi garment factories, where
Speaker 2: workers face especially hot and humid conditions.
Speaker 3: Every part of the world, heat is a combination of
Speaker 3: high temperatures and humidity, So in a place like Bangladesh,
Speaker 3: you can have much higher humidity than you might in
Speaker 3: some other places, and so that's a key thing to understand,
Speaker 3: and the type of solution that you then have to
Speaker 3: keep people cool can be different. So you know, when
Speaker 3: we're looking, for example, at electric fans, like how effective
Speaker 3: are they as compared to air conditioning. Air Conditioning is
Speaker 3: always going to be the best, but not everybody has
Speaker 3: access to that, right, especially across the developing world. So
Speaker 3: a key part of cooling is not just sweating, but
Speaker 3: then that sweat be able to cool or to dry off.
Speaker 3: It's that drying piece that is essential. If you're just
Speaker 3: sweating and sweating and sweating, you are going to keep
Speaker 3: overheating and so you need it to continually be drying
Speaker 3: to be it effective. And so that's one thing where
Speaker 3: a fan in a particularly human environment might be helpful
Speaker 3: because it can help kind of encourage sweating to have
Speaker 3: that maximum potential.
Speaker 2: But it's worth noting fans also come with risks. In
Speaker 2: extremely hot and dry climates, fans can actually heat people
Speaker 2: up faster, and like cooling centers, Kenny says, us fans
Speaker 2: can give people a false sense of security. They can
Speaker 2: make you feel better while you're using them. So good
Speaker 2: that you may feel well enough to go back out
Speaker 2: in the heat.
Speaker 1: But what's important here is it doesn't reduce the strain
Speaker 1: on the body. It makes you feel better, that again
Speaker 1: mass the potential dangers that you might experience because you're
Speaker 1: not able to sense the fact that you are probably
Speaker 1: going to be overheated, or you are overheated, you're.
Speaker 2: Understrainth The United Nations has used Kenny's research to inform
Speaker 2: its worker safety recommendations, and Zara says it's not just
Speaker 2: governments that are taking notice. Companies like smart Cone are too.
Speaker 2: They make devices and wearables to monitor the temperature on
Speaker 2: job sites.
Speaker 3: One of the clients they're currently working with is United
Speaker 3: the airline company, which is told me how they are
Speaker 3: testing out smart Cones wearable device which helps monitor heat
Speaker 3: exposure and worker exerts at employees working on the tarmac
Speaker 3: and on the ground at Phoenix Airport. So this is still.
Speaker 2: Early days, egg frying on the tarmac condition right, probably right,
Speaker 2: but real world example of how this is playing out.
Speaker 2: Zara says that when she asks heat researchers about the
Speaker 2: next big questions in their field, their answers usually fall
Speaker 2: into two camps.
Speaker 3: The first was what are the most practical takeaways we
Speaker 3: can get in the applications of this work to really
Speaker 3: help best improve people's safety today. And then it's what's
Speaker 3: going to happen in the future. How do we understand
Speaker 3: how hot is it actually going to get? And then
Speaker 3: what does that mean for people's health. Part of the
Speaker 3: interesting research that's going on is trying to understand that,
Speaker 3: and it really is a whole bunch of unknowns and
Speaker 3: really like we don't know what is the limit. I
Speaker 3: feel like that's a lot of what this work is
Speaker 3: trying to figure out.
Speaker 2: This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
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