In the middle of the day, in two hours, a vehicle in the sun can reach almost 60°C, when outside the temperature is 32 degrees, a difference of 26°C inside the car. In these days of extreme heat, you must be very careful.
Leaving a baby or small child for an hour inside a car without refrigeration, with 31 degrees outside, while we run our errands, would end their life, as the child suffered heat stroke inside of a car that has reached close to 50 degrees. The situation may be more dramatic in the midst of the heat wave that is affecting Spain this week, with locations exceeding 40 degrees. A situation that can also seriously affect if we leave an older person.
“Hyperthermia greater than 40 degrees of environmental origin causes progressive damage to many organs: muscular, cardiovascular, renal, pulmonary, neurological… leading to the death of the child, since temperatures above 42 degrees lead to cell death,” he warns. José María Arévalo La Calle, president of the Spanish Society for Critical Patient Care (SEAPC). “Small children, due to their immaturity, are very sensitive to high temperatures because they do not yet have well-developed thermoregulation,” says the SEAPC physician.
This independent and non-profit scientific society and the manufacturer RiveKids, a technology company focused on children’s road safety, have carried out a practical simulation, based on four different scenarios, to measure the interior temperature reached by a vehicle and the risks involved, taking as variables: the temperature, the areas inside the vehicle, the hours of the day and the exposure time.
In the study, four very common situations in the lives of many families in Spain have been recreated:
-Simulates a situation in which an adult leaves the car on the street and in the sun to go to work between 08:00 and 15:00; and at that last hour, in some areas of the front part of the vehicle 65º were registered.
-A scenario of a vehicle on the street for two hours, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., where different tasks and errands can be carried out, when the outside temperature goes from 22°C to 32°C degrees.
-Car in the sun in the central hours of the day, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the temperature inside rises much faster.
-Case 4. Car in the sun between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., with a milder outside temperature, between 21 and 24 degrees, but inside we see how, in just 1 hour, the temperature rises 17 degrees to 41 °C, and after 3 hours the vehicle has been set to 50 °C.
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