Heat Exposure Among Adult Women in Rural Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

AbstractExposure to heat is associated with a substantial burden of disease and is an emerging issue in the context of climate change. Heat exposure is of particular concern in India – one of the world’s hotter countries and soon to be its most populous – where a large fraction of the population works outdoors, lives in dwellings that are thermally inefficient, and is unable to access cooling technologies. Despite these concerns, relatively little is known about personal heat exposure in India, particularly in rural areas. Here we leverage temperature data collected as part of a randomized controlled trial of cookstove replacement to describe personal temperature exposures of older adult women in rural Tamil Nadu. We also compare personal exposure measurements to the nearest ambient monitoring stations, as well as to commonly used modelled temperature data products. We find that temperatures differ across individuals in the same location on the same day – sometimes by more than 5 °C within the same hour – and that some individuals experience sharp increases in heat exposure in the early morning or evening, potentially a result of cooking with solid fuels. In comparisons with the personal exposure measurements, we find stronger correlations with the modelled products (R2of ∼0.74) than with ambient monitors (R2of ∼0.6). We did not find evidence of systematic biases, which indicates that adjusting for discrepancies between personal and ambient exposure estimates is not straightforward. This study indicates a need for improved heat exposure assessment in epidemiological and burden of disease studies in India.