WATCH: What Happens To You Inside A Hot Car?

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, CA — As with much of the country throughout the hot summer months, residents of Rancho Santa Margarita and across inland Orange County have received several excessive heat warnings. With high temperatures reaching toward and above 100 degrees, leaving a pet or a person inside a parked automobile is unconscionable, according to one doctor who recently sought to draw extra attention to the dangers of hot cars — especially for one particular demographic.

Whenever there's a heat wave, authorities warn residents about the effects of the rising temperatures on infants or pets in cars, but Dr. Matthew Mullarky, an Orange County physician, is asking the public to take notice of how much more dangerous it can be for the elderly.

Mullarky is a 60-year-old emergency room physician at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. This week, he sat in a hot car for about a half-hour to show how the heat affects those advanced in age.

The Danger

"I don't know that there's any statistic because it's kind of overlooked," Mullarky said of people leaving the elderly alone in a hot car.

But it's an issue that should get more attention because with advances in medicine life expectancy is improving, Mullarky said.

"As our community is aging this is going to be potentially more of a frequent occurrence with caregivers and sometimes with family members taking people to appointments and going shopping, and with the elderly person not quite as mobile, they leave them in the car while they run a couple of errands," Mullarky said.

The elderly can be more vulnerable to heat stroke because of medications they must take, Mullarky said.

"Simple things like antihistamine dry you out and you don't sweat as well and you won't dissipate the heat through evaporation as you normally would," he said.

Some parents leave children in a car when they are fatigued, experts say.

"Sometimes with the kids, it's a matter of parents forgetting the child is with them," Mullarky said. "They'll be doing a routine thing and the brain tricks them into thinking no one else is in the car with them."

A child may have more capacity to verbalize their suffering and draw attention to it if left alone in a car in a public place, but some elderly who are mute wouldn't be able to draw the same help, Mullarky said.

The Test

Mullarky sat inside the dark sedan, while his temperature and vital signs were monitored. The windows were sealed, rolled up tight, and no air conditioning was running at the time of the experiment.

According to Mullarky, he "wanted to see what the physical effects are."

Temperatures in cars can climb as high as 125 degrees, and 80 percent of that is reached in the first 10 minutes, Mullarky said. By the oversized thermometer on the windshield, that was not an understatement.

"So leaving people in a car for a short period of time can have a physiological effect on them," he said.

After three minutes, the vitals check of Dr. Mullarky opened the door, to test his blood pressure and temperature.

After 24 minutes, Mullarky was ready to be done with the experiment, visibly sweating and uncomfortable. The temperature inside the car reached 123-degrees.

When asked if he had to return to work after the experiment, Mullarky laughed, saying no. He was all done.

"This was a safely controlled demonstration, with certified medical personnel and expert nurses on site," a spokesperson for the hospital said. "Do not try this at home."

The St. Josephs Hospital team recommended an app that will remind you frequently to make sure your family members or pets are not left in the car...

http://www.kars4kids.org/safety-app/

Image via Shutterstock