Global warming and the Summer Olympic and Paralympic games: a perspective from the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Lisa Yamasaki,Shuhei Nomura

doi:10.1265/ehpm.21-00024

Abstract

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games provided a significant opportunity to consider global warming as an issue to be seriously addressed to run the safe and fair games in the era of climate change. As the global temperature continuously rises and extreme hot-weather events increase in frequency and intensity, the future summer Olympic and Paralympic games will need to deal with the heat by applying thorough and appropriate countermeasures. In the recent decades, many mitigation measures to protect athletes from heat have been rapidly discussed by the sports community, including countermeasures to hold games at times and places with moderate temperature and climatic risk assessments with Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) during the games. However, the excessive heat conditions in the Tokyo 2020 Games affected not only athletes, but also all people concerned the events. While deliberate considerations by organizers had been given to mitigate extraordinary heat, the evaluations of these measures and epidemiological analyses of risk factors of patients must be further enhanced to develop efficient measures for the future. Therefore, we discussed the underlying climate-related problems of the summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in view of what we had experienced in the Tokyo 2020 Games. Facing with emerging global warming, future intervention against heat in the summer Olympic and Paralympic games will need to integrate systematic disease surveillance and evaluation of intervention with an effective combination with the approaches previously conducted. The Tokyo 2020 Games is a wake-up call to accelerate the public health measures towards the creeping global warming.

Highlights

The issues to grow with the Summer Olympic and Paralympic games in the era of global warming have been discussed recently. [1, 2] The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games brings us an opportunity to recognize the climate impact to deliver the safe and fair games for all people concerned in the event
[15] According to media information which is based on press conference of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, 59 athletes and 91 other relevant persons of heat-related illness were reported during 17 days of the Tokyo Olympics [16] out of total number of 11500 and 79000 [17] who may work for either outside or inside sports
Future directions of the Olympic and Paralympic games in the era of global warming While the future hosts of Olympics and Paralympics are picked more than 10 years before the games, the climate conditions make a rapid progress [20] and careful consideration are needed with the selection of host cities and seasons

Summary

Introduction

The issues to grow with the Summer Olympic and Paralympic games in the era of global warming have been discussed recently. [1, 2] The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games brings us an opportunity to recognize the climate impact to deliver the safe and fair games for all people concerned in the event. The issues to grow with the Summer Olympic and Paralympic games in the era of global warming have been discussed recently.

Results

Conclusion