Climate change, heat stress and its impact on health and work capacity in vulnerable groups

气候变化、热应激及其对弱势群体健康和工作能力的影响

• 批准号: 427395841
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Hanns-Christian Gunga
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Centre for Global Health Research
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-31 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/427395841?language=en
• 关键词: Climate; change; heat; stress; its

Climate change intensifies exposure to extreme heat events. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) excessive heat already presents an alarming health hazard. Human beings have to keep to a certain core body temperature of about 37 °C to maintain health. When exposed to heat, effective responses can be activated to facilitate heat losses from the body, by increasing skin perfusion and/or increasing the sweat rate for example. However, those reactions can cause heavy strain on the body – especially when combined with intensive physical work, which typically occurs during outdoor farming activities. Such strain with prolonged heat exposure can cause exhaustion and in severe forms, will lead to heat injuries or death. This is even more likely when the work has to be performed under hot and humid environmental conditions. As most of the daily workload in SSA is subsistence agriculture, any reduction in productivity will induce several additional severe economic, social, and health consequences, thus in the first phase, we investigated the heat stress experienced by young healthy farmers in SSA and its impact on health and productivity. Whereas the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT, °C) accounts for the major environmental factors responsible for heat stress, the Physiological Strain Index uses physiological data, i.e., heart rate and core body temperature, to determine the heat strain on the body. However, vulnerability to heat changes largely varies as a function of individual characteristics, thus pre-existing health conditions play a key role. As non-communicable diseases are an emerging issue in SSA, whose prevalence may be underestimated, during this second phase we will focus on farmers affected by chronic respiratory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. We aim at determining the specific physiological impacts of climate variations on labor capacity in this vulnerable population in SSA: accounting for the seasonal and geographical differences, quantifying the additional adverse effect of the pre-existing disease, assessing sex-related differences and determining whether cost-effective adaptation strategies, as behavioral interventions, are feasible. Looking deeper at the productivity, our team will coordinate within the Research Unit (RU) a newly conceived inter-cluster study: the Heat to Harvest (H2H). The H2H study will leverage the RU approach, by integrating the methods already in use within individual projects, linking heat stress, housing cooling interventions, working pattern during harvest, yields quantity/quality and children undernutrition. In the literature a wide range of studies have described the adverse effect of climate change on agricultural production in general and propose various changes in agricultural techniques, however, the impact on the farmers’ work capacity has never been studied in SSA, to the best of our knowledge.

气候变化加剧了极端高温事件的暴露程度。在撒哈拉以南非洲地区（SSA），过高的热量已经造成了令人震惊的健康危害。人类必须保持一定的核心体温（约37°C）才能维持健康。当暴露于热时，可以通过例如增加皮肤灌注和/或增加出汗率来激活有效反应以促进身体热量散失。然而，这些反应可能会给身体带来沉重的压力，尤其是在户外农业活动中通常发生的高强度体力劳动的情况下。长时间暴露在高温下的这种压力会导致疲惫，严重时会导致热损伤或死亡。当工作必须在炎热和潮湿的环境条件下进行时，这种情况就更可能发生。由于SSA的大部分日常工作量是自给农业，生产力的任何下降都会引发一些额外的严重的经济、社会和健康后果，因此在第一阶段，我们调查了SSA年轻健康农民所经历的热应激及其对健康和生产力的影响。湿球温度（WBGT，°C）是造成热应激的主要环境因素，而生理应变指数则使用生理数据（即心率和核心体温）来确定身体的热应激。然而，对热变化的脆弱性在很大程度上取决于个体特征的函数，因此预先存在的健康状况起着关键作用。由于非传染性疾病是撒哈拉以南非洲地区的一个新问题，其患病率可能被低估，因此在第二阶段，我们将重点关注受慢性呼吸道疾病（例如慢性阻塞性肺病（COPD）和哮喘）影响的农民。我们的目标是确定气候变化对撒哈拉以南非洲弱势群体劳动力能力的具体生理影响：考虑季节和地理差异，量化已有疾病的额外不利影响，评估与性别相关的差异，并确定具有成本效益的适应策略（如行为干预措施）是否可行。为了更深入地研究生产力，我们的团队将在研究单位 (RU) 内协调一项新构思的集群间研究：加热到收获 (H2H)。 H2H 研究将利用 RU 方法，整合各个项目中已使用的方法，将热应激、住房降温干预措施、收获期间的工作模式、产量/质量和儿童营养不良联系起来。在文献中，广泛的研究描述了气候变化对农业生产的总体不利影响，并提出了农业技术的各种变化，然而，据我们所知，撒哈拉以南非洲从未研究过气候变化对农民工作能力的影响。