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Beat the Heat at Sporting Events

Posted on Sunday, June 5, 2011 by zaid

A ball game in a stadium, a swim meet at an outdoor pool or a day at the race track: Watching a sporting event with family and friends under the noonday sun is a rite of summer. But when you add sun exposure to crowds and fun and maybe even alcohol, the results can be deadly. Heat can kill.
"It is a combination of the ambient temperature and not doing anything about it" that can lead to danger, said Dr. Wally Ghurabi, chief of emergency medicine at Santa Monica-UCLA Health Center.
In the United States, heat exposure led to 8,000 deaths between 1979 and 2003, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This is more fatalities than all other weather-related causes combined, including hurricanes, floods, lightening and tornados.
Luckily, a little prevention can go a long way to ensuring an enjoyable day at the ball park remains just that.

Know the Danger

Heat-related illnesses including heat stress to heat exhaustion and, most seriously, heat stroke do not require record-breaking temperatures to occur. Temperatures between 80 and 90 degrees can be dangerous, especially when high humidity raises the heat index.
It is an issue that is not lost on anyone who operates a large outdoor public venue required for a sporting event.
Heat "is always a concern and safety is certainly the No. 1 issue when we have thousands of fans on site," said David Talley, spokesman for the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. "We want to make sure they're safe and they return home safely."
Heat tends to build slowly and can lead a body to a point of no return. If the body is exposed to heat for a long enough period of time, it can lose the ability to regulate its core temperature, Ghurabi said.
The body's internal temperature can reach 106 or 107 Fahrenheit on a humid 90-degree day, creating a potentially fatal situation in which medical intervention is far less successful.
Factors such as age, weight or a medical condition like diabetes can compromise medical intervention even further.
"Tylenol and aspirin and all the other steps that we have to lower temperature don't work. The mechanism is totally out of whack," Dr. Ghurabi said. "The thalamus, the organ that is responsible for the temperature control center, gives up."
Ghurabi also said that seizure medication, sometimes needed for heat stroke victims, can be ineffective at this point.

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