Abstract
The elderly are one of the most vulnerable groups to heat-related illnesses and mortality. In tropical countries like India, where heat waves have increased in frequency and severity, few studies have focused on the level of stress experienced by the elderly. The study presented here included 130 elderly residents of Kolkata slums and 180 elderly residents of rural villages about 75 km south of Kolkata. It used miniature monitoring devices to continuously measure temperature, humidity, and heat index experienced during everyday activities over 24-h study periods, during hot summer months. In the Kolkata slum, construction materials and the urban heat island effect combined to create hotter indoor than outdoor conditions throughout the day, and particularly at night. As a result, elderly slum residents were 4.3 times more likely to experience dangerous heat index levels (≥ 45°C) compared to rural village elderly. In both locations, the median 24-h heat indexes of active elderly were up to 2°C higher than inactive/sedentary elderly (F = 25.479, p < 0.001). Among Kolkata slums residents, there were no significant gender differences in heat exposure during the day or night, but in the rural village, elderly women were 4 times more likely to experience dangerous heat index levels during the hottest times of the day compared to elderly men. Given the decline in thermoregulatory capacity associated with aging and the increasing severity of extreme summer heat in India, these results forecast a growing public health challenge that will require both scientific and government attention.
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Acknowledgements
We are extremely grateful to Tanima Das and Rashmi Chatterjee for their data collection efforts in the urban slums and to Manas Halder, Sulekha Chakraborti, Tanushree Ghosh, and Purnima Makal for their data collection efforts in the rural villages. We also would like to gratefully acknowledge Ashakiran Hospital, the Kautala Friends Sporting Club, and the West Bengal Voluntary Health Association for their help in organizing the field work in the rural villages. We also received assistance from the following individuals: Professor Susmita Mukhopadhyay (Indian Statistical Institute) who helped in translating the questionnaire developed for the study from English to Bangali; Anushka Ghosh, Sayani Das, and Samarpita Debnath who helped in pre-testing the questionnaire; Samir Halder, director of Ashakiran Hospital, who helped in organizing the field work in the rural villages; Sandip Saha who helped in organizing field work in the urban slums; and Avijit Roy who performed all data entry into the computer. Finally, we are particularly indebted to the residents of the Kolkata slum and rural village who participated in the study.
Funding
This research was supported by a fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, and a grant-in-aid of research and a summer research award from Temple University.
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Charles A. Weitz: conceptualization, methodology, supervision, project administration, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing - original draft, writing - review and editing, funding acquisition. Barun Mukhopadhyay: conceptualization, methodology, supervision, project administration, investigation, writing - review and editing. Ketaki Das: supervision, project administration, investigation, writing - review and editing
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The study was reviewed and approved by the Review Committee for Protection of Research Risks to Humans of the Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata) where BM was affiliated at the time of approval, and by the Institutional Review Board of Temple University. It complied with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
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The study was described verbally and in writing to potential participants, and individual consent was obtained in writing before participation.
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Weitz, C.A., Mukhopadhyay, B. & Das, K. Individually experienced heat stress among elderly residents of an urban slum and rural village in India. Int J Biometeorol 66, 1145–1162 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02264-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02264-8