Hot Asphalt Is Sending Phoenix Residents To The Hospital With Third-Degree Burns

Earlier today, we wrote about a Reuters article that explained how cities create urban heat islands that make them hotter than surrounding rural areas. In that post, we mentioned that asphalt doesn’t just get hot. It also stays hot. And when it gets hot, it gets really hot. Hot enough that you could burn yourself, even. As it turns out, that’s not merely hypothetical. In Arizona, Phoenix is seeing a significant increase in people coming into its hospitals with burns from the hot asphalt.

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CNN reports that over the last month, hospitals in Phoenix have seen an increasing number of patients admitted with serious and sometimes even life-threatening burns caused by hot asphalt. Dr. Kevin Foster, director of burn services at the Arizona Burn Center at Valleywise Health, told CNN that all 45 of the beds in its burn center are full, and a third of those are people who simply fell on the ground. Additionally, they have more burn victims in the ICU, about half of whom were burned after falling.

“Summers are our busy season, so we anticipate that this sort of thing is going to happen. But this is really unusual — the number of patients that we’re seeing and the severity of injuries — the acuity of injuries is much higher,” Foster told CNN. “The numbers are higher and the seriousness of injuries are higher, and we don’t have a good explanation for it.”

One thing he does know is that Arizona has been hotter than usual this summer, and that means the asphalt is hotter, too. “The temperature of asphalt and pavement and concrete and sidewalks in Arizona on a warm sunny day or summer afternoon is 180 degrees sometimes. I mean, it’s just a little below boiling, so it’s really something,” Foster told CNN. And while brief contact with the pavement can burn you, the worst injuries are to people who have trouble getting back up after they fall. When someone is on the ground for 10 minutes or longer, “the skin is completely destroyed,” and you’re looking at serious third-degree burns.

Additionally, Dr. Rena Carlson, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, told CNN that you shouldn’t forget about your pets in hot weather, either. They can easily get bad burns on their feet, too. She recommended keeping your cats inside, which any responsible cat owner should be doing anyway, and only walking your dogs early in the morning or late at night. And while dog booties can help for short periods of time, they may not fully protect your dog from burning its paws.

“If you have to get them outside,” she told CNN, “Just go out to do their duty and get back in as quick as possible.”