Is passive cooling a public health tool? Experts say heatwave crisis demands it be treated as one

NEW DELHI: (Jun 10) From disrupting sleep and threatening pregnancies to hitting livelihoods, heatwaves fall hardest on the urban poor, with experts across disciplines converging on a common response — that passive cooling, built into roofs, walls, and public spaces, is a public health intervention that can no longer be overlooked.

Identifying what passive cooling solutions are in practice, Benjamin Hickman, Programme Manager at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in India, noted that while cool roofs can reflect heat away from low-income communities, they work best when combined with other relatively affordable measures such as roof insulation, appropriate building materials, traditional practices, and shading of windows, walls, and roofs.

Hickman, who has spent 12 years leading initiatives on sustainable cooling, highlighted that a critically overlooked aspect is extracting heat from buildings, especially at night through exhaust and forced ventilation, while keeping windows shut during the day.

Source: PTI News

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