Thermal Comfort of Severely Disabled Children in Nursery Schools in Japan

Abstract

In 1979, primary and secondary school education has become the duty for every disabled child in Japan and government should prepare schools even for the most severely disabled ones. Thus, in Yokohama city, today they have five special schools for children each of whom suffers severe combined physical and mental disabilities. Such combined disabilities were usually thought to be a kind of severe cerebral palsy. However, teachers in these schools have observed these children have some severe thermo-regulatory disorders which are not usually found in cerebral palsy adults. In 1997–8 we executed a questionnaire to teachers on observed thermal responses about all school children and behaviour observations by our staff in these five special schools. Nearly 40% of school children suffer thermo-regulative disorder. Wide variations were found in the symptoms of thermo-regulative disorder even in air-conditioned school rooms. This paper reports statistical analysis of the results of the questionnaire and observations, and discusses future problems.