Sadashiv Yadav, 46, collapsed from a heart attack in 2024 after working long hours in western India’s sorghum and soybean fields, where heat rises in the summer to over 40°C (104°F). Yadav realized he was in trouble when he felt a sharp pain in his chest, and sweat poured down his body.
“Even in peak summers, I hadn’t experienced that kind of sweating,” he recalled.
At the hospital, doctors found blockages in the arteries supplying blood to his heart and surmised that years of working in extreme heat likely strained his cardiovascular system.
Many forms of heart disease are linked to chronic inflammation, and scientists are probing whether global warming has worsened this condition for people around the world, even among younger adults in northern Europe where extreme heat is much less common than in India.
Unlike acute inflammation, the immune system’s tool to fight infection or heal an injury, chronic inflammation is a prolonged immune response that can damage healthy tissues over time. Chronic inflammation has been linked to conditions ranging from arthritis to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and other major illnesses.
