a slow and brutal toll on the teens in Sarah Mueller’s high school chemistry class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 7:30 in the morning, the classroom can hit 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Mueller tries to keep students’ spirits up by joking with them. She estimates that over the years she has spent at least $1,000 of her own money on fans. It’s still not enough. By the end of the day, her students are sweating, exhausted, and unable to focus.
Heat affects the brain in a few key ways. First of all, overheating is just distracting. If a kid is miserably sweating out a heat wave, they’re not focusing properly on the test in front of them. On hot days, Mueller says her students struggle to keep their heads up off their desks, much less focus on a lesson about lab safety.because their bodies are still developing. To keep from overheating, the body sweats, of course.
“When we don't have as much blood—with a lot of hemoglobin and oxygen—going into the brain, we can't focus, we can’t think, and we can't learn as efficiently as we should,” says Tarik Benmarhnia, an environmental epidemiologist at UC San Diego.
. At its least harmful, this discomfort further distracts asthmatic students. But extreme heat can also send them to the hospital if an asthma attack escalates. That’s not only dangerous, it also disrupts their schooling.