Rising temperatures due to climate change could lead to physical inactivity for millions of people around the world by 2050 and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, indicates a study released this week.
The work, published in the magazine further considers that rising temperatures could cause “billions of dollars” worth of lost productivity.
In a statement, Lancet explains that the investigation used a climate model to analyze data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 and predict how rising temperatures could affect physical activity globally by 2050.
“The model indicates that, by 2050, each additional month with an average temperature above 27.8 degrees Celsius (°C) would increase physical inactivity by 1.5 percentage points globally and by 1.85 percentage points in low- and middle-income countries, but with no clear impact on high-income countries.”
“This translates into a predicted 0.47 to 0.70 million additional premature deaths annually and $2.40 to $3.68 billion in productivity losses,” the statement said.
The greatest increase in inactivity will occur, according to the model, in warmer regions, such as Central America, the Caribbean, Eastern Sub-Saharan Africa and Equatorial Southeast Asia, where a temperature above 27.8 °C could lead to a rise of “more than four percentage points per month”.
Global consequences and warnings from researchers
The authors emphasize, however, that these are projections based on mathematical models, based on surveys on the physical activity declared by people and that only temperature changes were considered, thus continuing to exist “great uncertainty regarding the exact real impacts”.
The lack of physical exercise is already considered a health problem worldwide, indicating a report from the World Health Organization released in October 2022 that “about one in three people” do not meet the WHO guidelines for weekly physical exercise.
Even everyday physical activities are increasingly difficult to perform, according to a study published in the scientific journal Environmental Research: Health.
This work concluded that since the 1950s the exposure time of millions of people around the world to a temperature that prevents them from safely carrying out daily physical activities has doubled.
The researchers considered there to be “severe quality of life restrictions” when high temperature and humidity limit “any activity more strenuous than sweeping the floor in the shade.”
“Many more people will face longer periods in which ordinary daily activities will be unsafe as the world’s populations grow and age”, indicates this study, noting that vulnerable regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia “are expected to experience rapid population growth”.
According to the authors of the study published by The Lancet Global Health, the results they obtained point to the need for measures to protect the population from rising temperatureslike:
- Make cities cooler.
- Provide accessible air-conditioned places for physical exercise.
- Give clear guidance on how to stay safe in extreme heat.
“Without strengthened mitigation measures, rising temperatures alone could compromise – or even reverse – a substantial portion of the WHO target to reduce global physical inactivity by 15% by 2030, while simultaneously slowing economic growth through heat-related declines in worker productivity,” the study says.
The researchers also draw attention to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissionswhich contribute greatly to global warming.
Temperatures above 30°C cause thermal stress and harm the health of many peoplewith extreme heat estimated to be responsible for nearly half a million deaths annually.
