Mitigating the risk of heat-related injury

There is a call for a global approach to addressing the climate crisis and its potential for adverse impacts on human health.1 Injury prevention experts have long recognised extreme heat, sun exposure and other climate effects to be important causes of injury, given the external factors that are implicated in their causation.2 Injury prevention issues around heat-related causes have become more prominent recently under the premise of climate emergency3 and frequent occurrence of heatwaves due to climate change.4 Heat-related injury (sometimes also known as environmental heat stress or exertional heat illness) occurs when the body’s physiological balance is interrupted due to more heat gain than heat loss. External factors that are often implicated are (a) exercising in high ambient temperatures; (b) heat wave conditions that particularly affect older, younger or medically comprised people; (c) high humidity conditions that limit sweat evaporation...
Source: Injury Prevention - Category: Accident Prevention Authors: Tags: Editorial Source Type: research