We know that there's a 5% to 25% increase in emergency room visits and hospitalizations every time we have a fire in the Pacific Northwest. And this inflammation then results in the heart attacks and the strokes, the vascular issues and the pulmonary issues. The fires create what we call fine particulate matter or two and half microns, get absorbed into the lungs, into the bloodstream and cause inflammation. Again, how does that happen? Well, increased heat dries out the forest. When we look then at the disease burden that is carried, the effects of climate change increased illnesses like myocardial infarction, strokes and asthma. And again, a higher percentage of these individuals are going to be from disadvantaged communities. And then there's a whole houseless population that are literally exposed to the elements. And oftentimes, there's no air conditioning in these houses at all as well. And the temperatures within cities can vary significantly in these areas, called heat sinks, can be even worse. So if you're a farm worker and you're outside in the fields in 116-degree heat, you can only imagine what that's like.Ī lot of people in these communities, unfortunately, live in heat sinks, areas of cities that have no trees, a lot of concrete, a lot of tar. And the effects are worse when you are outside working. And those communities typically are communities of color.
I think it's important that we focus on how climate change disproportionately affects certain communities. Cave: Well, it can be looked at in a lot of different ways. Talk to us a little bit more about, again, that intersection between health and climate change kind of now and what we think might happen in the future.ĭr. And you've actually said that we do need to treat climate change as a public health crisis. Unger: I think for anybody out there that's skeptical about the connection between climate change and public health as a now crisis can just hear the stories that you're telling here and think otherwise.
Even our flagship hospital came within a quarter mile of having to be evacuated because the flames were so close. 11 people were killed, thousands of homes destroyed, four small towns essentially wiped out. And two years ago, we had a million acres burn, over a million acres burn in Oregon. You know, these heat waves are making the forests just burn even worse than they did before. And what we found was that the majority of the deaths in the Pacific Northwest occurred in people that were living in houses without air conditioners.Īnd a year before that two years ago, we had the worst fire season ever. Portland and Seattle, two of the three cities in the United States that have the least amount of air conditioners per household, not surprisingly. In Washington and British Columbia, and we had over 1,000 heat-related deaths which was just a tragedy. And the rest of the Pacific Northwest was also affected. It turns out that when you're making pressure cookers, you use that technology that we see environmentally in heat domes, and Portland, Oregon, reached a temperature of 116 degrees. Last year, in the Pacific Northwest, we had what we refer to as a heat dome. But I think we were surprised at just how bad they can get and so quickly. You know, I think we all knew things were going to get bad.
Why don't we just start by talking a little bit about the trajectory that we're on and how it's been especially evident in your home state of Oregon.ĭr. Some people might not realize just how much the effects of climate change have intensified over the past few years. In fact, I don't think you can look at the news today and not see that in the headlines. Unger: Well, we know that climate change is a global crisis. Colin, it's a great pleasure to have you on today.ĭr. I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer in Chicago. Cave is also an AMA delegate and he's asked me to call him Colin today. Colin Cave, medical director of external affairs, government relations and community health for Northwest Permanente, the medical group for Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Portland Oregon. Unger: Today we're talking about the link between health and climate change, and how physicians and health systems can be a part of the solution.
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