Yale UniversityJul 3 2024
"Our study is adding to a growing body of literature that underscores that high ambient temperature not only has immediate health effects, but also may be a cause of future chronic diseases," said Tormod Rogne, the study's first author and assistant professor of epidemiology at YSPH. "Exposure during the first trimester is suspected to be the most critical because this is when the most profound developmental alterations in hematopoiesis occur," said Xiaomei Ma, senior author and professor of epidemiology, referring to blood cell production.
Racial and ethnic minority groups experience a disproportionate burden of heat exposure, in part due to their line of work and residential segregation. A recent YSPH study has shown that people living in segregated communities are more vulnerable to heat. The study included 6,258 children with ALL and 307,579 children without. The greatest association between ambient temperature and risk of ALL was observed in gestational week eight, which is in the middle of the first trimester of pregnancy. In this week, a mean weekly temperature of 30 degrees Celsius was associated with an almost doubled risk of ALL compared with a mean weekly temperature of 10 degrees Celsius .