Health hazards of winter
Winter increases susceptibility to accidents and infections
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By Vuokko Pentzin
Cold winter temperatures are continuing during the week, but something has changed. Have you noticed? The cold is not as cold as it was at the beginning of the year, for instance.
This is how it is supposed to be. “People adapt to cold in just a couple of weeks”, says Professor Simo Näyhä of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.
The winter brings much joy, but on the level of the whole population, we can see how heavy a toll the cold season takes on health. In fact, winter is dangerous to the point of being deadly.
Each year between 75 and 85 people die of hypothermia. Most are either middle-aged men who are intoxicated at the time, or elderly people who have wandered away from home, or the institutions where they are being cared for.
Deaths from freezing are just a fraction of the serious consequences of the cold. Each year, between 2,500 and 3,500 deaths take place in Finland, caused by the direct or indirect effects of cold, even though the causes of death recorded in the statistical information are heart attack, stroke, pneumonia, or some other “normal” reason.
Winter accounts for 5-7 per cent of all deaths in Finland. The cold takes ten times as many lives as traffic.
How is this possible?
We are an arctic nation, after all. We have survived the Winter War! We live in warm houses and work indoors, and we know how to protect ourselves from the cold. We are so resilient that no frosty weather can get us!
Or are we?
One in four Finns suffer from some chronic illness which can be exacerbated by the cold. We have coronary heart disease, hypertension, asthma, emphysema, diabetes, and musculoskeletal ailments.
Low temperatures trigger protective reactions in the body, which reduce the waste of energy and improve tolerance to cold. Blood pressure rises and the composition of the blood changes, the pulse increases and the volume of breathing declines.
A healthy organism can withstand the changes well, but for the chronically ill and the aged, they can be dangerous. The risk grows already for those below the age of 50.
Already in the 18th century it has been recognised in Finland that mortality is highest in the winter months. The colder the weather, the more deaths. In the winter, mortality from diseases of the respiratory tract grew by 90 per cent, and those from ailments of the circulatory system grow by 40 per cent.
The risk of death for an individual person can be 30 times higher on a cold day than on a mild day, when the average temperature for 24 hours is 15 degrees Celsius.
“Bacterial and viral infections can lead to heart attacks during the winter, either directly or indirectly, in people weakened by age and illness”, Simo Näyhtä says.
Snowstorms can also be risky. Sudden deaths in Finland increase after big snowstorms, when people with heart problems go out to shover the snow.
the number of deaths is the lowest in Finland when the average 24-hour temperature is 14 degrees. In warmer climates, such as the Mediterranean, people start shivering already when the temperature goes down to 20 degrees.
We Finns are well adapted to cold conditions. We know how to protect ourselves against the dangers.
“We have relatively fewer winter-related deaths than in European countries with milder temperatures. This stems from differences in behaviour and housing culture. For instance in Britain, home heating is poor and windows are single-glazed”, Näyhä says.
As climate change sets in, health care services will need to prepare for new challenges, as periods of extreme cold and heat, heavy rains, drought, and other extreme phenomena become more frequent.
But we’re already cold!
In the south of Finland, there are between 120 and 150 days in a year when the average daily temperature is below freezing, and in Inari, in Lapland, the average is 180 days.
About 800,000 Finns work in the cold at least occasionally. Of them, nearly 300,000 will work all day in the cold, for instance at construction sites and in agriculture and forestry. Cooling of the body and stress caused by cold weaken a person’s ability to function, leading to industrial accidents, frostbite, and hypothermia.
People living in the north of Finland are exposed to cold during work for longer periods than those in the south, and rural residents get more cold than those in the cities. In the north and east of Finland, exposure to cold during free time is significantly greater than in Helsinki.
However, people in Helsinki get chills more frequently than anywhere else in Finland.
Let’s let Simo Näyhä remind us about a few basic facts.
“When it is cold, the most important thing is to protect the head and the extremities. Wear a hat and gloves. In severe freezing weather, women should wear trousers and thick tights underneath. It would be best not to wear a skirt.
Winter can be survived.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.1.2010
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 26.1.2010 - THIS WEEK |
 Health hazards of winter |
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