The very real and terrifying danger of leaving your child in a hot car
Heat injury is not something to be taken lightly, and Australian celebrity chef Matt Moran uses a striking example to show you just how dangerous it is to leave your child in a car alone.
Matt Moran is one of Australia's top chefs.
In the video below, he draws on his cooking expertise to bring all parents a very important message on child safety.
Consider what would happen if a child was sitting in the car in place of the lamb loin.
The cut of meat reached well-done within the space of an hour, which is pretty much the same as placing the meat in a conventional oven. Leaving a child in there will leave him/her susceptible to heat injury that can lead to death.
A car exacerbates the problem of heat in the environment, essentially because it is an enclosed metal container.
While Singapore certainly doesn't experience the soaring temperatures Australia does in their Summer, we still have many hot days for most of the year, exposing our kids to this same risk.
What's more, the outside temperature doesn't even have to be very hot for a child left inside a car to succumb to heat stroke.
Here's some perspective:
Web MD quotes Christopher Haines, director of pediatric emergency medicine at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia as saying: “On a day that is just 72 degrees Fahrenheit [around 22 degrees Celsius), the temperature [inside a car] can increase by 30 to 40 degrees in an hour, and 70% of this increase occurs the first 30 minutes.”
Here are some safety tips to ensure that your child will not suffer in the heat:
Always check before you lock-up the car
- Ensure all the seats of the vehicle is empty before you lock it up and walk away, do take special note of the back seats.
- Place a stuffed animal, or any of your child's toy beside you as a visual cue that your child is in the vehicle.
- If someone else is fetching your child, make sure that your child reaches the destination safely.
Bear in mind the
dangers of heat
- A car's internal temperature can rise over 20 degrees in 10 minutes, so do not assume that leaving your children inside for a even short period of time will be okay.
- The internal temperature of a car does not automatically correspond to that outside. Even if the outside temperature is around 26 degrees, the temperature inside can reach around 35 degrees.
- A child's health is in grave danger when his/her body temperature reaches 41 degrees.
