Recently, there have been many instances of people leaving children in the car without opening windows or keeping the air on. 54% of children who die from heatstroke died because they were left in a car with closed windows. Without an airflow, the temperature inside the car can increase to 45 degrees higher than the outside temperature within twenty minutes.

“There is never enough air to ventilate a car on a hot day.” retired fire chief David Miller said. Even with windows cracked, children or animals are at risk. Children are more vulnerable to these conditions because of their size. People are largely unaware of the dangers of leaving a child or an animal in a hot car. The heat can cause heat exhaustion, heat stroke, organ failure, increase in body temperature, and death.

“If nothing else, the child will be dehydrated, but they are often at risk for much more,” Miller said. If environmental circumstances cause a child’s body temperature to increase to 104 degrees, it is considered heatstroke, accompanied by sleep, seizures or vomiting. If a child’s body reaches 107.6 degrees, organs will begin to shut down under ‘heat stress.’

The cause of this is normally when very responsible and excellent parents are unaware of these dangers.

“Any temperature is unsafe for a child to be locked in a car,” Miller says. “They are not only at risk for health issues, but also for kidnapping.”

According to Vicki Ortiz Healy in the Chicago Tribune on July 30, 2015, Illinois has had 21 vehicular heatstroke deaths of children under 14 since 1987, the 10th highest number of all states for that time frame. Experts say this steady average of deaths has something to do with laws passed in 1998, requiring people to keep children and infants in the backseat.

Unfortunately, this causes some parents to forget about their child or children. Since then, Illinois — and four other states — have passed laws to prevent death or illness, but the problem is still very prevalent.