Editorial: Take proper precautions and beat the stifling heat

By: Editorial | Opelika Auburn News
Published: June 26, 2009

If it feels too hot to work or play outside right now, that’s because it probably is.

Officials from the Alabama Department of Public Health are urging citizens to take proper precautions to prevent heat-related injuries or illnesses. Often, such precautions are issued in July or August, not June.

But stifling temperatures over the past week, including local highs above 95 degrees with heat indexes beyond 100 have raised concerns. A 61-year-old woman died of heat stroke in Dothan last week.

“In Alabama we unfortunately always have at least two or three deaths related to the heat and it’s not unusual to have 10 in a year, so it is a serious problem,” Jim McVay, director of Alabama’s Bureau of Health Promotion and Chronic Disease, told the Associated Press.

“Any time it’s this hot and this prolonged, we have to be concerned because stress from heat is actually cumulative,” he said. “When it spikes and goes down, it’s generally OK. But particularly for the elderly, the more prolonged the heat is, the more risk they are in each day.”

People can endure heat stress or heat exhaustion, but the most serious heat-related illness is heat stroke. Once this happens, body temperature cannot be regulated. Early symptoms include dizziness, nausea, headaches and cramping.

But there is no reason to wait until your body begins experiencing such symptoms to get out of the heat. In such oppressive weather, outside work should be limited, or even put off until the evening or performed early in the morning. Cold drinks should be readily available.

This is the vacation season and our area is blessed with scores of outdoor, summer activities. But people cannot be urged enough to use caution to protect themselves and their loved ones. Many deaths can be prevented, but heat-related deaths are seemingly ones that can be easily prevented by using common sense.

The warmest months of the year are still ahead of us, which leave us little relief in sight – other than the relief we allow ourselves by not taking chances and beating the heat. It’s been said that Alabama has “two or three” heat-related deaths per year. Let’s not allow one of those to happen in our backyard.