Heat Exposure among Adult Women in Rural Tamil Nadu, India

[NNadir]

The paper to which I'll refer is this one: Heat Exposure among Adult Women in Rural Tamil Nadu, India Aniruddha Deshpande, Noah Scovronick, Thomas F. Clasen, Lance Waller, Jiantong Wang, Vigneswari Aravindalochanan, Kalpana Balakrishnan, Naveen Puttaswamy, Jennifer Peel, and Ajay Pillarisetti Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (1), 315-322.

The paper is open access; anyone can read it.

It caught my eye because it gives an estimate death toll for extreme heat while many of us on this planet, as indifferent as we are to the seven million people who die each year from air pollution - roughly 90 million people since we first started whining that someone somewhere someday might die from radiation exposure as an outgrowth the failed reactors, the present total being close to zero if not zero itself - complain that nuclear power isn't safe but that the status quo, dependence on dangerous fossil fuels, is "safe."

From the text:

Exposure to hot temperatures is a top environmental risk factor for global mortality. (1,2) In 2019, an estimated 308 000 deaths were attributed to heat exposure; (3) this already substantial burden is expected to increase as the climate continues to warm. (4) Heat is also associated with a substantial morbidity burden, as well as with reductions in labor productivity. (5) Heat exposure is of particular concern in India─a hot country and also the world’s most populous (6)─where a large fraction of the population works outdoors, lives in dwellings that are thermally inefficient, and is unable to access cooling technologies such as fans or air conditioners. (7)

Despite these concerns, relatively little is known about personal exposure to ambient temperatures in India, particularly in rural areas. Ambient monitoring stations are sparse and even where present may not accurately represent individual exposures, as people frequently move between indoor and outdoor environments, both in the sun and in the shade. Improving exposure assessment for temperature can enhance our understanding of the health effects of heat and cold by reducing potential biases and measurement errors associated with ambient monitors and modeled products, which are commonly used in epidemiological and burden of disease studies. (1,8,9) Personal measurements may also highlight opportunities for intervention by identifying high-exposure activities.

In this study, we leverage data collected as part of the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) randomized controlled trial of cookstove replacement to describe personal temperature exposures of adult women in rural Indian villages in Tamil Nadu. In addition, we compare personal exposure measurements to the nearest identified ambient monitoring stations, as well as to two sources of modeled temperature data often used in health effect studies (due in part to the limited spatial coverage of the ambient monitoring network). (8) Through these comparisons, we assess potential measurement errors when using proxies for personal temperature exposure...

I put the number in bold, an estimate from 2019. It seems low to me, but I have no data to support that feeling.

This is "only" roughly 850 people per day on average, compared to around 19,000 people per day for air pollution. The figure is likely to be higher in 2024 than it was in 2019, as the authors note.

Of course, lest anyone forget...FUKUSHIMA!!!!!!!!!!!

How many people died from radiation at Fukushima again?

The paper, again, is open to the public. Read it if interested.

History will not forgive us our stupidity, nor should it.