ADVANCEMENT OF THE PRACTICE
DIRECT FROM ecoAmerica
Staying Cool in a Changing Climate: Caring for Health in Extreme Heat
Nicole Hill, MPH
Ben Fulgencio- Turner, MPP, CPH
tions connected to diabetes—can be worsened by extreme heat (NIEHS, 2022). A study by Parks et al. (2020) found that unusually warm years are associated with an increase in injury- related deaths such as drowning, transport, assault, and suicide. Temperature alone is not the only impact of extreme heat. Climate change also influ- ences humidity levels (Eltahir & Krol, 2022). When there is a high saturation of moisture in the air, our bodies are not able to cool down through the evaporation of sweat as they nor- mally would, which makes it dicult to regu- late our internal temperature and exacerbates or hastens the health impacts previously mentioned (Eltahir & Krol, 2022). Some individuals in our communities are at more risk than others, including people older than 65 years who are at risk due to the likelihood of having a chronic medical condition that can impact the body’s natural response to heat (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). People who do not have access to cooling are another aected group. On average, Black households have 50% less access to central air conditioning than White households while experiencing higher heat-related mortality rates (O’Neil, 2005). Discriminatory housing policies such as redlining have put people of color at higher risk of heat exposure. Homan et al. (2020) found that formerly redlined neighborhoods are on average 2.6 ° C (36.7 ° F) hotter than non-redlined neighborhoods. Children are also at risk due to physical characteristics such as not producing sweat as quickly and because they are more reliant on adults to access cool areas (Huetteman, 2022). There are many other individuals that are also at higher risk of heat-related health
Editor’s Note: The National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) strives to provide up-to-date and relevant information on environmental health and to build partnerships in the profession. In pursuit of these goals, we feature this column from ecoAmerica whose mission is to build public support and political resolve for climate solutions. NEHA is an ocial partner of ecoAmerica and works closely with their Climate for Health Program, a coalition of health leaders committed to caring for our climate to care for our health. The conclusions in this column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the ocial position of NEHA. Ben Fulgencio-Turner is the director of Climate for Health within ecoAmer- ica. Nicole Hill is the research and marketing manager for ecoAmerica.
A s we enter into the warmest months of the year, it is good to remind our- selves that environmental health professionals play a vital role in protect- ing public health from the hazards of heat, which are increasing due to climate change. Likewise, we must remember that to safe- guard the general public, the environmental health workforce needs to protect itself from these very same threats. To date, climate change has increased global temperatures about 1.8 ° F on average (Eltahir & Krol, 2022). What this change translates to is not just a mere increase in global tem- perature—it also increases the frequency of extreme heat days (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021). The Intergov- ernmental Panel on Climate Change (2021) reports that extreme temperature events that previously would occur only once every 10 years are now 2.8 times more frequent due to global temperature increase.
People are feeling these eects as cities across the country are experiencing hotter summers, including not only hotter days but also many more of them. In 2022 alone, over 7,000 daily temperature records were bro- ken in the U.S. (Stevens & Samenow, 2022). According to the World Health Organization (2018), the number of people exposed to heat waves globally increased by 125 million between 2000 and 2016. In the U.S., heat is now the number one cause of weather-related death (National Weather Service, 2021). When people are exposed to extreme heat, they can lose control of their internal temperature, which can result in short-term but dangerous symptoms such as heat cramps, exhaustion, heatstroke, and hyperthermia (National Institute of Environ- mental Health Sciences [NIEHS], 2022). Fur- thermore, preexisting chronic conditions— including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cerebrovascular disease, and condi-
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