[Rantman] Health Impacts Of Climate Change (Local Seattle but universal message) - on KUOW radio today

[rPauli]

KUOW News <http://kuow.org/news>
http://kuow.org/program.php?id=24203   Click for audio of transcript below


  Health Impacts Of Climate Change

Ruby de Luna <http://kuow.org/search.php?get=1&slHostSearch=8>
08/09/2011

Washington state might seem immune to the hot temperatures that are 
affecting the rest of the country, but that's not the case. Some people 
may reject the idea of climate change, but scientists say summer 
temperatures have been climbing over the years, and it will continue to 
get hotter over time. It's these kinds of heat conditions that put many 
people at risk. Some researchers estimate that in 2004 alone the cost of 
hospitalizing people due to extreme heat was nearly a billion dollars. 
In the first part of our report on heat and health, KUOW's Ruby de Luna 
reports on the health impacts of climate change.

TRANSCRIPT

Remember the heat wave of 2009?

News Clip: "Seattle tied an all--time record high Tuesday, and it's 
getting hotter... "

That heat event in the Pacific Northwest lasted a week.

News Clip: "Today, Seattle is supposed to reach triple--digit temps for 
the first time ever."

Seattle peaked at 103 degrees, a record high for the area. Well, 
scientists say we can expect hotter days ahead.

Richard Fenske is professor of environmental occupational health 
sciences at the University of Washington.

Fenske: "When we look across a period of 20 to 40 years, we are 
confident that temperatures are increasing, and this will result in 
severe heat events and probably longer heat events, but not necessarily 
every year."

In 2009, Fenske and his colleagues in the School of Public Health were 
awarded a federal grant to study how climate change will affect people's 
health. In a nutshell, the study concluded that heat events will likely 
lead to what they call excess deaths. How do researchers know that?

Michael Yost: "We counted the dead bodies, and we continue to count them."

That's Michael Yost, also a UW professor in the same department. He and 
Fenske are part of the research team that's analyzing the data for the 
study.

Here's what they did: They tracked Washington's previous weather records 
between May and September for the last 26 years. They noted a rise in 
overall temperatures during that time. The team also looked at death 
records for the same time period. They found that whenever there was a 
heat event, there were more deaths, mostly elderly people.

The thinking goes that if temperatures continue to rise in the next few 
decades, so will the number of excess deaths. But it's hard to predict 
just exactly how much warmer it's going to be, or how many hot days 
we're going to have. So, Fenske and Yost came up with a range of 
scenarios. On the low end, the region may have only 16 extreme heat days 
in a given year; or, on the high end, as many as 30 days.

Yost: "What we're trying to do is to not simply say this is one possible 
outcome in the future, but to simulate many possible outcomes, and so 
what we end up with is a range of possible values for how many heat 
events might occur in, say, 2025."

The study's goal is to help local public health agencies and emergency 
responders prepare for heat events. Richard Fenske says this will 
prevent deaths and unnecessary hospitalizations.

Fenske: "We can develop a warning systems, education, transportation 
systems to get elderly people to cool environments, like a public 
library, during a heat event. There are ways to prevent these deaths if 
we choose to do so, but we have to know where and when they might occur."

And since extreme heat days are uncommon in the Puget Sound region, most 
homes don't have cooling systems. And when it does get hot, especially 
for an extended period of time, most people don't know how to deal with 
the heat or lose the ability to take precaution.

Susan Allan: "As we age, our ability to deal with heat gets poorer and 
poorer in lots of ways. Our bodies don't regulate and respond to heat 
nearly as effectively as we get older."

Susan Allan is director of the Northwest Center for Public Health 
Practice at the University of Washington. Before that, she worked more 
than two decades in public health.

She says older people aren't the only ones who are vulnerable to heat. 
People with respiratory conditions like asthma are at risk. People with 
health issues, such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, 
kidney disease and diabetes are also affected.

Allan: "Heat stress can make any of those conditions worse, or 
precipitate a health crisis for people with a wide range of diseases."

Allan is also part of the UW research team. Her role is to present these 
findings on heat--related deaths to communities so they can develop 
long--range action plans and policies. Allan says most communities now 
plan for heat events as part of their emergency response, just like they 
would for flooding or earthquakes.

But planners may have to rethink how best to create public awareness in 
a region that's not used to heat events. They may also think about what 
kind of resources they may want to invest in, say, emergency medical 
services (or EMS), given that future heat events are expected to become 
more routine.

Allan: "With some numbers to predict how many more of these things are 
likely to be, that might help make the shift from, Well, EMS just goes 
on overtime, to, We really need to start working on the community so 
people don't need to call EMS because they're not getting sick."

Beyond planning emergency responses, communities could use the 
information to consider changes in the environment, like adding more 
parks or community centers. This would be especially useful in poorer 
neighborhoods where residents may have limited options for cooling off.

I'm Ruby de Luna, KUOW News.

© Copyright 2011, KUOW

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