Heat waves are not only a summer emergency to be faced with shaded areas and water bottles. They are a silent condemnation that accelerates the biological clock of our body, a scientific verdict that radically changes the perception of the risks related to the climatic crisis. The impact, the researchers warn, is comparable to long -term damage caused by smoke and poor nutrition.
This was revealed by a research published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, which for the first time has measured the permanent effects of the extreme heat on health. For 15 years, a team of scientists from the University of Hong Kong has followed about 25,000 adults in Taiwan, comparing their exposure to the hot temperatures with their biological age: not the registry one, but that of their vital organs and systems, a key indicator of the general state of health.
The results
The results suggest that the repeated and prolonged exposure to heat waves accelerates aging. To translate the data into reality, four days of extreme heat over two years have “aged” the body of the participants of about nine days. It may seem like a trifle, but as Dr. who chief of the study explains, it is a cumulative effect. “If the exhibition accumulates for several decades,” he told the Guardian, “the impact on health will be much greater”.
But the verdict of the heat is not the same for everyone. The study turns on a lighthouse on a profound social and health inequality. The most affected categories are manual workers, residents of rural areas and people who live in the community with limited access to the air conditioning. For those who work outdoors, biological aging is almost four times faster, with an increase of 33 days in the same observation period.
This discovery, according to experts, marks a turning point. “We witness a paradigm change in our understanding of the entity and the severity of the impact of heat on our health,” Professor Paul Beggs told the Guardian, commenting on the research. To date, the risks were considered acute and short -term, such as dehydration or heat stroke. Now science shows that the damage is chronic, profound and can last all life, influencing health since childhood.
The alarm launched by the research could also be only the tip of the iceberg. As the authors themselves points out, the champion of 25,000 people analyzed in Taiwan was on average younger, healthy and educated of the general population. Since the elderly and the sick are notoriously more vulnerable to heat, it is highly likely that the real impact on aging is even more serious than the study has detected. Moreover, these data are inserted in an increasingly consolidated research vein: a recent US study has already connected the extreme heat to an aging accelerated in the elderly and a faster cognitive decline. Early aging is no longer a hypothesis, but a concrete and documented risk of the climatic crisis.
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