Hundreds of roofs in the informal settlements of India's western Gujarat state have been painted in a reflective, white coating over the last two months to try to keep their occupants cooler as the hottest time of year approaches. - REUTERS
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00:00For the residents of this informal settlement in India's Gujarat, tackling extreme heat
00:06could be as simple as a lick of paint. White paint, to be exact, containing highly reflective
00:12pigments such as titanium dioxide. Over the past two months, hundreds of roofs have been
00:18given a new coat in a bid to keep people cool as the hottest time of the year approaches.
00:26With climate change making India's summers more extreme, residents here in Ahmedabad
00:31have suffered temperatures over 115 degrees Fahrenheit in recent years.
00:38The painting initiative is part of a global scientific trial to study how indoor heat
00:43impacts people's health and economic outcomes in developing countries, and how the cool
00:48roofs might help.
00:50They are very highly reflective, and they also emit and radiate the heat away.
00:56Epidemiologist Aditi Bunker is leading the project.
01:00Half of the community are assigned a cool roof, and half are not. And then we want to
01:06track a whole range of outcomes, including health and indoor environment outcomes. And
01:12we want to know what the effect of reducing the indoor temperature is on these outcomes.
01:19Most of the homes in Ahmedabad's crowded Vanzara Vaz slum are airless one-room dwellings.
01:27Resident Suman Pravin Vanzara said that before taking part in the study, the heat indoors
01:32was unbearable.
01:33Now that the colour has been applied, the house stays cooler. Earlier we could not even
01:38sit on the floor. Now we can. If the fan is not turned on at night, it's still fine.
01:46The Ahmedabad trial will run for one year. Other study sites are in Burkina Faso, Mexico
01:51and the island of Niue in the South Pacific.
01:54Early results from Burkina Faso showed that the cool roofs did reduce indoor temperatures,
01:59and that that subsequently lowered residents' heart rates.