Extreme heat makes pollution more harmful » Yale Climate Relations

Hariram Bhopaji had no choice but to breathe the wood smoke.

In his one-room home in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, he makes a living making Ravana hatha, a traditional wooden bowed instrument known as Considered to be the ancestor of the violin. He heated iron rods over fire and drilled holes in the wood, the smoke evoking bittersweet memories of his father Ugmaram ji, himself a renowned craftsman who made Ravana hadas.

“One day,” his father used to say, “this smoke is going to kill us all.”

Ugmaram Bhopa ji died of asthma 15 years ago. Hiraram ji, 42, also suffers from asthma.

Hariram Bhopa ji said: “When I was young, I never paid much attention to it. “As I grew older, I felt its impact. “

Wood fires produce harmful pollutants such as particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide.

To make matters worse, climate change is exacerbating air pollution around the world, especially as global warming has led to a significant increase in wildfires in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia and other regions. According to a growing body of research, lung problems are increasing rapidly, especially in countries like India with extreme heat and increasing pollution.

While air pollutants from wood burning pose a direct threat to instrument manufacturers in India, rising temperatures due to climate change are compounding the problem, exposing them to ozone and secondary pollutants.

Bhopa ji explains, “Earlier, artists would suffer from asthma only after the age of 65, but now, asthma has become common after the age of 35. “Many generations of artists before me have made Ravana Haddas , even without access to clean fuel, but no one faces such a serious problem. “

Air pollution is a global threat

According to a research paper published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in 2022, short-term exposure to PM 2.5 air pollutants and extreme heat increases the risk of death in California on the Pacific side. The combined effects of exposure to extreme heat and pollutants are far greater than the sum of their individual effects. PM are particles smaller than 2.5 microns that can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause many health problems.

“Exposure to both extreme heat and PM 2.5 is associated with a higher excess risk of death than exposure to extremes alone,” said Mustafizur Rahman, the paper's lead author and an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. The effects associated with high temperatures are greater.

Air pollution and extreme heat can cause oxidative stress, in which the accumulation of harmful molecules such as reactive oxygen species impairs the body's ability to detoxify.

“Antioxidants help cleanse these molecules, but air pollution and extreme heat can disrupt this balance,” Rahman explains.

In addition to the long-term effects, heat and air pollution can lead to heart disease and stroke.

This problem has become one of the biggest threats to human health in India. PM 2.5 pollution has shortened the average life span of Indians by 5.3 years.

“On days when we're exposed to extreme heat and extreme air pollution, we see cardiovascular deaths,” said Dr. Rob McConnell, a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and co-author of the 2022 paper. “We see an increase.”

Extreme heat makes air pollution worse

“Volatile organic compounds released from soil, vegetation and industry during periods of high temperatures and solar radiation are the main cause of nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector,” said Nidhi Singh, a postdoctoral researcher at the IUF-Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medicine. Germany. Higher temperatures will also promote the formation of more ozone and secondary organic volatilization, leading to the formation of more particulate matter, forming a vicious cycle.

In extreme heat, the body attempts to cool itself by breathing faster and deeper. Increasing ventilation rates allows the body to take in more air pollutants, while trying to cool down increases the risk by hindering the body's ability to expel harmful chemicals.

Exposure to ozone can cause coughing, difficulty breathing, respiratory infections, asthma attacks and lung inflammation. In addition to respiratory illness, long-term effects may include damage to the nervous and reproductive systems, cancer, and metabolic disorders.

To understand the relationship between air pollution and high temperatures, researchers analyzed data from 482 locations in 24 countries in April 2023. In the study, published in Environment International, they found that many air pollutants significantly increase the risk of heatstroke, leading to increased mortality from heart and respiratory problems.

faded legacy

Narayan Desai, 66, who lives in Mankapur village in Karnataka state in southern India, makes another traditional musical instrument “Shehnai” by placing three 17cm iron rods on the wood every day Heated for two hours, there is a double reed on the iron rod. They cannot afford clean energy to practice the dying art of handcrafting this ancient wooden instrument, popularized globally by the late Ustad Bismillah Khan Ji of.

“Working with iron rods was never an easy task as I had suffered third degree injuries due to burns many times before but I had no idea that one day the smoke would take away this art from me” explained Desai ji. Taking long pauses to breathe when speaking. Now he can't breathe to play the instrument he made. “I tried to play the game in 2022 but my lungs became so weak that I passed out,” he explained.

In 2021, Desage suffered a heart attack and doctors advised him to stop this work. He continued to work, and a year later he began to suffer from high blood pressure. None of their families were home when they heated up the bars.

“I feel breathless,” said his wife, Sushila, who is in her 40s.

Meanwhile, falling demand for the instrument and sluggish income have also taken a toll on Bhopaji, who earns just 3,000-5,000 Indian rupees ($35-47) after taking 15 days to make a Ravana hada.

He asked: “How can I buy any clean energy when no one is willing to pay top dollar for musical instruments?”

Artists in Jaisalmer make Ravana Haddas between March and June, a time when tourism in the region has plummeted due to the sweltering heat.

“The heat here has been unbearable for the past three years,” said Bopage. He has handmade more than a thousand Ravana handles, which have been purchased by tourists from France, Germany and many European countries.

Despite this, no one came to him to learn how to make the instrument. Today, only a few artists make Ravana Hadda in Jaisalmer. His children and neighbors often found him suffering from breathing problems, coughing and poor eyesight.

“The younger generation doesn't want to work in this field because of the health risks,” he explains.

Dinkar Aivale, a flute maker from Kodoli village in Maharashtra, died in 2021 due to breathing difficulties due to damage and scarring of lung tissue.

Avalegui spent more than 150,000 hours in his life creating exquisite flutes.

In the last years of his life, he began to experience difficulty breathing while playing the flute, a sign of a dangerous condition, but he never stopped playing the flute.

In 2019, he told me, “What worries me more than my health is that this art will die with me, and I don’t want that to happen.”

short solution

The World Weather Attribution Study shows that human-caused climate change increases the likelihood of extreme heat waves in South Asia in 2022 and 2023 and makes such events 30 times more likely to occur in the future.

A study published in the British Medical Journal found that more than 2 million people die from air pollution in India every year, with extreme summer conditions making the situation worse.

Singh said air quality monitoring systems should be strengthened and expanded beyond cities. They also recommend alerting people by warning them about extreme weather events and conducting regular health checks to identify such vulnerable groups. It is also important to ensure timely provision of essential medicines in such emergencies.

“In this case, the biggest step can only be taken by governments,” she said. “They will have to enact stricter regulations to curb high emissions and high temperatures.” “

According to the State of Global Air 2024 report, nearly 50% of ozone-related deaths due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) occur in India, followed by China and Bangladesh.

In addition to asthma, Bhopaji is now showing symptoms of COPD. Despite this, he still burns wood to make instruments, saying: “I know this art will kill me one day. But if I give up making instruments, I will starve to death. There is no solution to this problem.”