Can climate change cause sickness and what is the impact on athletes?
Great question! And the answer is yes, climate change can cause sickness in lots of ways. Illness from extreme heat, bushfires and bushfire smoke, and the spread of diseases like malaria are all linked to climate change. One of the biggest risks to athletes is having to play or train in extreme heat. As you probably know, climate change is making extreme heat events (or heatwaves) longer and more common. So it’s becoming more likely that most athletes will need to play or train in these sorts of conditions, especially sports that are normally played outside and over summer (like athletics, tennis or cricket).
Exercising when its really hot can potentially make you very sick. Your body needs to stay within a certain temperature range (36.1°C-37.2°C) to operate effectively, and we have lots of mechanisms to make that happen (like sweating, for example). If the conditions we are training or playing in mean our body is unable to stay within that range, then we can get a heat-related illness. This can be mild, like a headache or feeling dizzy, and if we cool down, then our body can keep doing what it was doing before. However, if we can’t cool down adequately, then it becomes a problem. This is called heat stroke and it’s a very serious and life-threatening condition. If you want to see what this looks like, watch this clip of Scottish marathon runner Callum Hawkins competing in the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. It’s a reminder that when we are training or competing in a hotter environment that usual, we need to take time for our body to get used to the new conditions. This is called acclimatising.
Photo: Creative Commons | Eckhard Pecher.
Another impact of climate change is the increased risk of bushfires. These can generate a lot of smoke, and the smoke can travel a long way. We saw that in the Black Summer fires in 2019-20, when smoke from those fires travelled right around the world (watch this amazing clip from NASA!). If athletes are training or playing when the smoke levels are high, this can also make them sick. Its not good for your body to breathe in lots of smoke, especially when you are breathing hard, like when you are playing sport.
